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DISCOURSES 



|T||t LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



JWASHINOTON 

BY 



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EDWARD H HALL 

Pastor of the First Parish Cambridge Massachusetts 



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BOSTON 

George H Ellis 141 Franklin Street 

i893 



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COPYRIGHT 

By Geo. H. Ellis 
1893 



060. H. ELLIS, PRINTER, 141 FRANKLIN ST., BOSTON. 



TO THE 

jftrst parts!) in Cambridge 

IN MEMORY OF 

ELEVEN YEARS OF UNINTERRUPTED FELLOWSHIP 

THIS VOLUME IS 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 

1893 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This volume is published by a committee of the friends 
and parishioners of Mr. Hall. To their request for leave 
to print a selection from his sermons, heretofore refused, 
he at last consented a few months ago, on his departure 
for Europe, when retiring from the ministry. 

The committee are well assured that these pages win 
be precious to many a reader ; for they reveal the high 
qualities of character, thought, and feeling, which en- 
deared Mr. Hall to his people in an ever-increasing 
measure of gratitude, confidence, affection, and deep 
respect. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, October, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Supernatural i 

II. Not to be Ministered unto 14 

III. Worth of the Present Hour 26 

IV. Strength in Weakness 38 

V. Our Dead 51 

VI. Personal Influence 65 

VII. Memorials of Jesus ......... j8 

VIII. Earthly and Heavenly 92 

IX. An Indignity to our Citizen Soldiers . 106 

X. The Divine Humanity 122 

XI. Authority . 135 

XII. Peace 148 

XIII. The Dream and the Reality 161 

XIV. Inheritances 174 

XV. Justice to the Laborer 187 

XVI. Immortality . 200 

XVII. The Place of Jesus in the World's Re- 
ligious History 213 

XVIII. Farewell Discourse 226 



I. 

THE SUPERNATURAL. 

" As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher 
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." — Isa. lv. 9. 

I find a certain perplexity in beginning my dis- 
course this morning. I can find no text at hand 
exactly suited to my theme. I wish to speak of 
the supernatural, but I look through the Bible in 
vain to find that word. Neither Old Testament 
nor New contains it. They seem to know noth- 
ing of the supernatural. Or shall we say that 
they know of nothing but the supernatural, and 
have no more occasion to speak of it than we at 
noon-day to call attention to the sunlight? In 
any case, the omission is a significant one, and 
carries us back to a time when the great problems 
of the present hour had no existence for the popu- 
lar mind, if even for philosophic speculation, when 
the vast sphere of secondary causes which now 
presses in between the soul and its thought of 
God was wholly unknown, and when the discus- 
sion which I bring before you to-day of the differ- 
ence between the natural and the supernatural 
would have seemed utterly gratuitous and irrele- 
vant. For us, however, these two words do exist: 



2 DISCOURSES 

they play a definite part in our daily speech, and it 
becomes necessary for us now and then to ask our- 
selves what ideas we must attach to them. Natural 
and supernatural, — for what do these terms stand? 

Nature faces us on every hand; not perfectly 
understood, her laws but recently and partially dis- 
covered, not yet, perhaps, what she will by and by 
become, — a process rather than a result, — yet so 
consistent a system of causes and effects, embrac- 
ing in one scheme the phenomena of earth, air, 
and skies, that we do not hesitate to call her by 
name, and to live in constant recognition of her 
laws. Nature, to use a definition which all would 
accept, is the realm of discovered facts and laws. 

But Nature does not seem to cover everything. 
On every hand she borders upon a region whose 
facts we have not discovered and whose laws we 
do not understand. Beyond the known is the 
sphere of the unknown. Nature seems to us at 
times but a petty province, bounded on all sides 
by vast spaces, unexplored and trackless. We 
touch this unknown world at every point, not in 
spiritual matters only by any means, but in ma- 
terial as well. The chemist finds it when, after 
any analysis, he asks himself how any one of the 
elements he has employed performs its results, not 
what it can do, but how it does it. The botanist 
finds it the moment he inquires what power within 
the acorn it is which makes it produce an oak, and 
not an elm or pine. The astronomer finds it when 
he asks wherein the force which we call gravita- 



THE SUPERNATURAL 3 

tion resides, not what its laws are, but what in 
itself it is. The evolutionist finds it when he 
tries to span the gulf which thus far separates dead 
substance from living, or matter from mind. 

Even apart from spiritual laws, therefore, or 
the hidden ways of the soul, and without the aid 
of moralist or theologian or philosopher, we should 
discover, and do hourly discover, this outlying, 
all-encircling sphere, which no line of ours meas- 
ures, which no analysis of ours can resolve, which 
no known laws control, which no imagination pene- 
trates. This we are taught to call the realm of 
the supernatural. Below nature (if we may so 
speak), it is the abode of those impalpable forces 
by which all things live; around nature, it consti- 
tutes that unconquered province which grows only 
larger with all our encroachments upon it; above 
nature (as its name exactly indicates), it opens 
that holier sphere of being to which the soul's 
unsatisfied instincts imperiously point, which is 
to us as real and abiding as life itself, and which 
we reverently term divine. And this thought of 
a higher sphere it is, let me add, this idea of a 
holiness, beauty, and truth as yet unreached, this 
faith in things unknown and infinite, which lends 
to life its surpassing mystery, and fills the soul, 
under all disheartenments, with invincible strength. 
Very different would our earthly existence be if, 
outside our daily barterings and traffickings, did 
not lie this region of the unknown, the region of 
infinite possibilities. 



4 DISCOURSES 

Natural and supernatural, — no names could per- 
haps be better; certainly there are none other at 
hand to indicate the two realms which I have en- 
deavored to distinguish, and which you understand 
better than any words of mine can describe them. 
Yet the very attempt at definition proves at once, 
as you have felt all along, how poor the terms are 
at best, and how vague is our notion of what we are 
trying to express. The sharper your attempted 
distinctions here, the more inadequate your terms 
become, and the more superficial your knowledge 
proves itself. The more intently you gaze upon 
the supposed boundary line of which I have spoken, 
the more dim and uncertain it grows; and, if we 
try to fix it positively and finally, the brain fairly 
grows giddy before the task is begun. A sharp 
line of demarcation separates the ocean from the 
land, the mountain peak from the sky, or the 
moon's disk from the heavens behind it; but to 
determine just where Nature ends and the supernat- 
ural begins is like tracing the edge of the summer 
cloud or separating tint from tint in the sunset 
sky. Try to draw such a line, I beg you, and tell 
me how far you can follow it, and just where it 
carries you. It changes, you will find, as rapidly 
as the summer cloud. Where it lies to-day it has 
never lain before. Where would Nature's boun- 
dary line have run a century ago? Would it have 
included, for instance, the transmission of mes- 
sages across the seas, the hourly converse of 
Europe and America, the spoken message from city 



THE SUPERNATURAL 5 

to city? Would Nature have acknowledged as her 
own the necromancer who soothes your agonizing 
pain at a touch and blots whole hours out of your 
existence, or would she have left him to the com- 
pany of wizards and enchanters? Or, go two or 
three centuries farther back, what would she have 
done with the astronomer who anticipated the hour 
and moment of the sun's eclipse and boldly fore- 
told the appearance of a new planet, the eye which 
read in the buried rock the age of the universe, the 
hand which stereotyped for you, in an instant, the 
living features of your friend, or the letter of many 
thousand words carried beneath the bird's wing 
into the beleaguered city? We know on which 
side of the line stood the gods of Troy, lending 
their clumsy aid of monstrous serpent or wooden 
horse to the encompassed Trojans; where would 
have stood the workers of these vaster miracles for 
the besieged Parisians of to-day? Or, go still fur- 
ther back, if you will, century by century, it is ever 
the same. Nature dwindles as you go. Faster and 
faster its boundary recedes and its circle lessens, 
till, as you look, Nature vanishes wholly from your 
sight and the supernatural is everywhere. Yes, 
there was a time, indeed, in Greece and Rome, in 
Egypt and Judaea, when Nature was unknown, and 
when powers of another sphere, intervening every- 
where, caused the grass to grow and the rain to 
fall, the sun to rise and the disease to abate, the 
lightning to flash in anger and the bow to span the 
heavens with its arch of peace, caused the waters 



6 DISCOURSES 

to gush from the solid rock, and the waves of the 
mighty sea to recede before the steps of the retreat- 
ing host. 

Or try, if you choose, to trace Nature's line as 
it runs to-day, and tell me how far you can follow 
it or through exactly what regions it carries you. 
Does it separate visible things from invisible? 
Where, then, will you place the force which bursts 
the seed or stirs the sap with the returning warmth 
of spring? It is not visible, is it therefore su- 
pernatural? Does it separate purely human acts 
from divine, — in other words, acts which we can 
explain from those which we cannot? But from 
what spaces, pray, do I call these thoughts to me, 
wise or foolish as they may be, or by what power 
send the brain's message to the hand as I write? 
Does it separate will from law, spontaneous from 
involuntary action? Where, then, shall we assign 
our passions or our habits, affection or memory or 
remorse? Does it separate matter from mind or 
body from spirit? Why, then, does the blood 
bound in your veins as you see an unjust or cruel 
deed, or why does the brain give way under the 
intensity of thought? Some theologians of the day 
would fain class all these mental processes as su- 
pernatural, from sheer necessity of drawing the 
traditional line somewhere. Shall we rule them 
all out of Nature's territory, and retain within it 
only what is paltry and common? 

No: the task, as it seems to me, is hopeless. 
This is a line which cannot be drawn, try as long 



THE SUPERNATURAL 7 

and hard as you will. Following no divisions 
which human thought can trace, running never be- 
tween, but always through, separating nowhere, but 
penetrating everywhere, cutting asunder what seems 
one flesh and blood, and bringing together what 
seems world-wide apart, it eludes and mocks me, 
until in very despair I give up the pursuit forever. 

But why give it up entirely, you ask, simply be- 
cause you cannot trace it throughout? Certain 
moments in the world's history there have as- 
suredly been when its presence could be distinctly 
seen, certain events, about eighteen hundred years 
ago, which will give us all the knowledge of the 
supernatural we can ask. Why not turn to them, 
and find your definitions there? 

True, we find there a very sacred story, which no 
one has succeeded yet in wholly interpreting. The 
birth of a new religion, the entrance into the world 
of an ideally holy life, — what could be called 
supernatural, if not this? No one anticipated or 
predicted the birth of Christianity, nor has any his- 
torian ever yet revealed to us the exact causes 
which produced it. What was there, indeed, in 
the Jewish or pagan life of the early Roman Em- 
pire, its formalities, its frivolity, its sensualism, 
what in its art, its religion, or its philosophy, 
which could of itself have produced a Jesus of 
Nazareth? Ah! but the moment you ask this ques- 
tion you must ask many another. What was there 
in the atmosphere of the fourteenth century or fif- 
teenth, what was there in the morals or the religion 



8 DISCOURSES 

of the Medicis or the Borgias, what was there in 
that profoundly unspiritual age, among frivolous 
and dissolute courts, when Christianity, at its low- 
est ebb, was turning back to Paganism for the in- 
spiration it had lost, which could have produced 
the choicest fruits of religious art which the world 
has ever seen? What was there in the land of 
Queen Elizabeth, in the times of a Leicester or a 
Bacon, what in the literature of England or of the 
world down to the sixteenth century, to have pro- 
duced a Shakspere? Inexplicable, indeed! but who 
can explain these things? Who has ever foretold 
the coming of genius, or, when it had once arrived, 
has shown whence or how it came? I do not mean 
that the cases are the same. It is not the question 
whether the one matches the other, or whether the 
artist or poet is as great a wonder as the apostle or 
the saint. The only question is whether the one 
can be traced any more easily than the other to its 
natural source, whether genius can be shown any 
more readily than sainthood to be the normal 
flowering of humanity. And if it cannot, where 
is the line which separates the natural from the 
supernatural ? 

But what do you mean, you may here ask. If 
even that sacred story, holiest and most beautiful 
to us in all the past, has nothing in it which dis- 
tinguishes it definitely from other events of the 
world's history, then all difference disappears be- 
tween natural and supernatural, does it not, and 
they become one and the same? Is that what you 
would say? 



THE SUPERNATURAL 9 

Exactly. You anticipate my thought, and have 
reached already my conclusion. I say that the 
distinction between natural and supernatural is 
purely artificial and fictitious. I say that the 
terms create a difference which cannot be proved 
to exist, and introduce a confusion into the uni- 
verse which is wholly needless. I hold that, 
whether it be true or not that such a difference 
exists, no such distinction has ever been found; 
and, until it is found, it is wholly superfluous to 
assume its existence. I say that, as I look around 
me, I see Nature everywhere and I see God every- 
where. Nay, I find everything full of Nature and 
everything full of God; and, until I am compelled 
by evidence that is insurmountable, I see no rea- 
son to parcel off any scraps of Nature's boundless 
territory and declare that there God is not. I hold 
that these two terms were invented not to denote 
any actual knowledge, but solely to cover our 
ignorance; and that, when we say, Up to this point 
Nature goes, and beyond lies the supernatural, we 
mean only, Up to this point we have discovered 
God's laws, and beyond it we have not. Here is 
the known, there is the unknown. If we must 
keep these words at all, Nature herself is supernat- 
ural, and the supernatural is another name for 
Nature. Nature is full of miracles to overflowing, 
yet are all these miracles her own. "Enter," said 
the old philosopher, "for here, too, are gods! " 

And I say, furthermore, that this doctrine which 
I am urging is one of the plainest doctrines of 



10 DISCOURSES 

Christianity herself, and that the whole of Chris- 
tendom in its nobler moods avows this faith, only 
that, the moment it has confessed it, it proceeds 
forthwith, as though startled at its temerity, to 
modify and disown it. I say that there is not a 
Christian church to-day which has not in the most 
explicit terms acknowledged all that is here 
claimed; acknowledged that "there is one God, 
who is above all and through all and in all " ; and 
that, when it proceeds further and declares God 
present in certain souls and by implication absent 
from others, peculiarly present in certain times 
and places and by implication less present in 
others, or when it speaks of "the miracles" of 
eighteen hundred years ago, as if there were no 
miracles beside, it is false to its own higher 
thought and repudiates its own ideal. 

"Natural and supernatural," indeed! You can- 
not make this distinction without banishing God 
from some part of his universe and pronouncing 
something undivine. "Miracles of the past," in- 
deed ! but what shall we say of these miracles of 
the present? Men choose to ignore them, I am 
aware; to make little of them, that they may make 
much of something else. I am content to make 
much of these. "Put off thy shoes from off thy 
feet: the place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground." Uncover thy head. Wouldst thou be- 
hold a miracle? Here it is. Look at this tiny 
being which has just found its way into the world. 
Whence came it, and where slumbers now the mind 



THE SUPERNATURAL II 

which by and by is to shine through these vacant 
eyes and kindle its whole being into intelligence 
and life? Look at that motionless form. Where 
now is the soul that a moment ago was there? Is 
it gone? And, if so, when and whither? But a 
few hours ago you were yourself wrapped in uncon- 
sciousness : what roused you from your oblivion or 
brought back your lost intelligence? Birth, death, 
sleep, — not the whole universe nor the whole past, 
not Judaea nor Galilee, ever witnessed a miracle 
greater than these. But surely they differ, you 
say : these come every day, the others only once in 
the centuries. They differ? Yes, no doubt; as 
the comet differs from the planet, as the aurora 
differs from the moonlight, as the meteor flashing 
across the September sky differs from gentle Sirius 
shining serenely through the winter night. Why 
strive to put God as far as possible away ? Why so 
eager to prove that he is less near you or less 
mighty now than he was many centuries ago? Is 
life so very holy that you can afford to explain 
away the tokens of a diviner Presence? 

Natural or supernatural. Use whichever name 
you choose. It matters little, for words are but 
words. It is the same universe viewed from the 
one side or the other, the same shield seen from 
behind or from before. But do not fancy that the 
two names mean different things. Do not persuade 
yourself that the boundary which divides these two 
provinces is real. It is imaginary, and it changes 
with every hour. Look backward, as we have seen, 



12 DISCOURSES 

and the bounds of Nature shrivel from age to age, 
till Nature vanishes wholly from your sight, and 
the supernatural takes its place. Look forward, 
and the supernatural recedes, while Nature widens. 
Nature widens from day to day, invading constantly 
the realm of the supernatural, and winning province 
after province from its grasp. What yesterday was 
unexplored to-day is freely visited, what yesterday 
was a mystery to-day is understood, what yesterday 
was impossible to-day we quietly achieve. Swiftly 
and uninterruptedly the boundary of the natural 
advances, the boundary of the supernatural re- 
treats. 

"Then God is vanishing from his universe," 
men complain. Ah, no! they know not what they 
say. God is revealing himself more and more. 
For his commonest, acts, as we see them, are fuller 
of miracles than were the special providences of 
the past. Not the supernatural is less, but Nature 
is greater than we thought. The earth to-day is 
more wonderful than were the heavens once, the 
laws of to-day more marvellous than the miracles 
of yesterday. The skies which Moses adored and 
whose stars Abraham counted were a baby's toy 
compared with those which the telescope will 
sweep to-night, and whose remotest systems the 
astronomer's curious eye is searching this very 
hour. Nature is greater than we have thought. 
To measure her is to measure the whole thought of 
God. Unknown and unmeasured as yet are the 
powers which Nature carries in her bosom, and the 



THE SUPERNATURAL 1 3 

generations still to come are to witness her endless 
triumphs. The future belongs to her. 

"To Nature nothing is impossible," is the word 
of one of the foremost living disciples of science, 
upon whose head therefore rest most of those re- 
proaches which science seems called upon in every 
age to meet. No truer word has been spoken in 
our generation. "To Nature nothing is impos- 
sible." God's established laws are sufficient for 
all his works, and adequate to all his purposes. 
The system of the universe is complete in itself, 
and needs no addition to its machinery and no re- 
enforcement of its powers. Nature asks us, if we 
would honor God, not to find out something holier 
than herself, but to find out that she is holy. It is 
Nature that is holy. It is Nature that is divine. 
It is Nature, if you choose, that is supernatural. 
The natural and the supernatural are one. 

1871. 



II. 

NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO. 

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minis- 
ter." — Matt. xx. 28. 

Yes, every word, every act, was a ministry, as 
the story of that life is here told us. Every tone 
of his voice seems to have lightened some sorrow- 
ing heart or freed some imprisoned soul from its 
fetters. His very presence carried benediction 
with it. His life was a continued ministry. And 
it was such by its own necessity. Not as though 
he chose it should be so, as though he debated with 
himself whether he would serve his fellow-men or 
not, go forth to meet persecution and contumely or 
lead a quiet and peaceful life, speak the truth that 
was in him or withhold it; but simply because 
there was that in him which must needs find 
expression, because feelings so deep and tender 
must assert themselves, because sympathies so 
broad and generous cannot confine themselves 
within the heart, because the great power of bless- 
ing or capacity of action is its own incentive to 
beneficence or action. Such, I say, is the divine 
necessity laid upon every great soul. It comes 
into the world to minister. It has powers within 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO 1 5 

it which force it to action. It is too loving to be 
waited upon. It is too conscious of strength to 
ask for strength. It sees too plainly what it may 
contribute to the world, to make itself a burden on 
the world. 

It would be pleasant and instructive enough to 
trace the illustration of this truth simply in the 
life here before us; but let us turn first for a 
moment to find its meaning elsewhere, to see how 
far in other lives the same truth holds good. All 
life, it is true, is a mutual giving and receiving; 
and the highest can be helped, in a certain sense, 
by the lowest. If all ministered, there would be 
none to be ministered to. Yet is it not true that 
we all come into the world, not simply to be min- 
istered to, but to minister? not to borrow strength 
only, but in turn to give it? not primarily that the 
world may contribute to our being, but to contrib- 
ute something ourselves to the world? As a mat- 
ter of simple self-respect, we must take this view 
of life. For what can be more degrading than the 
constant sense of obligation? What belittles the 
soul more than to be perpetually reminded of its 
dependence? For the sake of our own self-respect, 
we must feel that we are not living wholly on the 
world's charity, but are contributing somehow to its 
wealth. 

This, I think, would be the first feeling of every 
right-minded man. Yet it is singular how easily 
this natural instinct of honorable pride can be 
lulled into silence. Before we know it we are 



l6 DISCOURSES 

receiving, not giving, favors; are beggars, indeed, 
from door to door, basket on arm and piteous 
entreaty on the face, beseeching place or patronage, 
a good word or a flattering testimonial, or are sup- 
plicants at least for the cold crumbs from the 
tables of others' enjoyment to eke out the pleasures 
of a languid and irresolute life. Let charity come 
to us as charity, and we scornfully reject it. Let 
friends or relatives offer openly to support us, toss 
us their outworn garments, or send us the cold 
remnants of their feasts, and none so proud as we. 
Yet it seems to me I see all around me recipients 
of favors just as beggarly, dependants on a charity 
quite as degrading, who yet betray no compunc- 
tion, and on whose cheek is no blush. There is 
great power in names. A little alms may make 
a beggar, great alms a king. 

Here is one, for instance, living in great wealth. 
Laborers toil to house him luxuriously and clothe 
and feed him sumptuously, servants are waiting 
hourly upon his bidding, the world in a thousand 
ways attends upon his pleasure. There is no harm 
in this, if he has earned it all, if it comes to him 
as the equivalent of toil or of merit. But (in such 
a case as I have in mind) I do not find that it has. 
I can see no labor of which this wealth is the re- 
muneration. I can see no mercantile skill or 
sagacity of which this is the just reward. I only 
hear of certain advantages, scorned by others, 
which he has not hesitated to use, of certain oppor- 
tunities, unnoticed by the eye of integrity, which 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO \*J 

his crafty soul has seen. I only hear of fortunes 
suddenly lost when his was won, and of poverty 
growing poorer when he became rich. Well-earned 
wealth adds to others' wealth, but he has built up 
his estate upon others' ruin. And yet, unprofit- 
able servant as he is, "reaping where he has not 
sown, and gathering where he has not strewed," 
emptying calmly others' treasures into his own 
coffers, and feeling in the pockets of the poor for 
every unused pittance he can find, he shows no 
shame as you meet him, and seems quite uncon- 
scious that he is living at the world's expense. 

Or here, again, is one whose wealth, by toil or 
by inheritance, is his own, and his by right. And 
yet his by what right? We will not dispute now 
the existing laws for the acquisition or distribution 
of property, which are, on the whole, as just to one 
as to another. Let us only ask whether property 
in the things of this world, in a universe which we 
did not create and do not own, does not always 
carry with it a corresponding obligation, — an obli- 
gation at least to the society whose institutions and 
laws have alone given property any abiding exist- 
ence. The universe is for man. He who by su- 
perior skill or foresight or industry has secured a 
portion for himself, however large, cannot justly 
be dislodged; but he who fences off that portion 
for his own personal and selfish gratification exclu- 
sively, making no contribution to the comfort or 
happiness or well-being of society, and recognizing 
no claims from society or humanity, is abusing his 



l8 DISCOURSES 

privilege, not using it. His life can never be 
noble or just who is content to receive everything 
and give nothing; to be always helped by the 
world, never to help; to accept position and 
wealth from society, yet recognize no debt to society. 
Or here is still another and more pitiable case. 
Here is one in a position of large emolument or 
official dignity, — one who always holds such posi- 
tion, and who passes from post to post, from call- 
ing to calling, from office to office, at will. Some 
of the best gifts of state or nation stand invariably 
at his command. Yet I can see no service ren- 
dered of which this is the due compensation. I can 
discover no mental capacity, no moral qualities, no 
genius, no experience, no industry, of which this 
is the fair reward. Indeed, he does not claim this. 
He gets his position for the asking, and is con- 
tent. It comes to him through favor, through 
partisan or friendly influence, through intrigue, 
through kindly regard for his necessities. It 
comes to him, as you notice, not for his desert, but 
for his want of desert ; not to reward his manhood, 
but to reward his lack of manhood. It comes to 
him not because he was willing to work, but be- 
cause he was willing to beg, not because he was 
able to live upon his talents, but because he was 
willing to live on charity. The world knows no 
such mendicancy as this, no such sycophancy of 
soul as that of the professional supplicant for place 
or honor, no such dogging of others' footsteps, no 
such echoing of others' sentiments, no such obse- 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO 19 

quious joy in others' smiles. The whole soul be- 
comes intent upon perfecting its own shame, upon 
making itself absolutely dependent upon the favors 
of the world, upon making its mendicancy com- 
plete. Such instances, I say, we can see on every 
hand. Yet I look in vain from one to the other for 
any flush of wounded pride, of nettled vanity, of 
offended dignity. I feel sure that they must see, 
as the world sees, how the greatness of their posi- 
tion only makes the more conspicuous their own 
littleness. I think, as I meet these men, that I 
must guard my words and check my glance, must 
tread daintily, of course, over such dangerous 
ground, and clothe my speech in delicate and 
euphemistic phrase. But no: the precaution is 
needless. I find no wincing at any touch, no 
shrinking from the plainest speech. This beggary 
is perfect in its art. Hat in hand, asking alms at 
every gate, it has learned to know no blush, and to 
be proof against mortification or reproach. 

So easy is it for us to become beggars without 
knowing it. So easy is it for names to blind 
us. So hard is it to understand that the only per- 
fect independence is to give as well as to receive, 
to give up to one's full capacity of giving, and so 
keep the balance of obligation, if possible, on the 
other side. 

But it is not pride alone that bids us minister 
rather than be ministered to; it is our own per- 
sonal good as well. Neither mind nor heart ma- 
tures, however fine its training or abundant its 



20 DISCOURSES 

resources, if it simply appropriates to itself, giving 
nothing out. Its strength and power come as it 
begins to react upon the world. Self-culture, how- 
ever noble an aim, is never the noblest. Good for 
our earlier years, it must be replaced in later life 
by some great purpose beyond, — the love of truth 
for its own sake, the desire for power, or the pure 
longing to serve humanity. Between the life spent 
in such intellectual pursuits as will simply gratify 
the tastes, stimulate the mind, or kill time, and 
the life spent in some actual service to society, is 
all the distance detween the dilettante and the 
man. The advantage of great qualities of mind or 
heart lies not half so much in what they directly 
bring to us as in the larger strength and capacity 
which we gain through their exercise. The more 
keenly we learn to realize others' wants and de- 
sires, as though they were our own, the wider the 
sympathies by which we act, the further away from 
ourselves our affections are turned, so much the 
larger and more vigorous does the soul become. 
The morbid nature, as you sometimes encounter it, 
at home only with its own griefs, or dwelling solely 
in its own past, or in love with its own fastidious- 
ness, or finding nothing beautiful save in its own 
tastes and nothing great or good save in its own 
ideals, or pursuing any thoughts which circle 
round and round the little centre of self, becomes 
the sure abode of weakness and discontent. Its 
egotism can end only in insufferable weariness and 
intellectual death. 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO 21 

But why dwell upon this point? It needs no 
argument nor any fine appeals to our unselfishness 
to convince us of this simple truth; that the soul 
finds its life only in action, in going forth out of 
itself. By a gracious Providence every sincere 
exertion of human power carries some blessing 
with it. Only let us not be selfish, and we must 
needs be generous. Let us live freely and in 
fullest measure the life that is in us, and we bless 
others while we bless ourselves. We come into 
the world to minister, to grow strong by doing, 
to grow wise by working out life's actual prob- 
lems, to grow loving by tender deeds, to grow rich 
by generous giving. 

But, to understand the full meaning of this truth, 
we must look of course to the world's more gifted 
souls, who really have more to give than they can 
well receive from others. For the most part, the 
world shows but poor appreciation of its moral or 
spiritual leaders. It is not content to leave them 
to themselves. If it recognizes them at all, it 
must needs become their advocates and interpreters, 
point out their beauty, explain their possible mean- 
ings, and adjust their words or thoughts to its own 
preconceptions. It is anxious lest they be under- 
estimated or overestimated, lest they be too much 
neglected or too much adored. It forgets that the 
great soul must of necessity be its own interpreter, 
and that all it asks of the world is to be taken at 
its exact worth. 

How seldom it is that the great thinker or poet 



22 DISCOURSES 

or philosopher owes aught to the fidelity or devo- 
tion of his followers, however zealous they may 
be. How seldom can they learn the secret of his 
thought, or add to the simple weight of his word or 
acts. They are apt to busy themselves in his ser- 
vice, they take his fame into their hands, they call 
upon the world to admire him, they glory in their 
appreciation of his worth. But their friendship 
cannot help him any more than their enmity could 
harm him. Their discipleship is their gain, if at 
all, not his. Let them serve him for the sake of 
serving, for the fine truth he utters, or the helpful 
influence he imparts, and all is well. Let them 
think to aid him or fancy his reputation is in their 
keeping, and they only work their own folly. 
They cannot make him great. He owes them no 
thanks, though he gives them thanks; for his 
slightest word outweighs all their praises, and his 
simplest thought goes where their applause can 
never follow. I speak only of the truly great and 
truly good. They form a class by themselves 
which no pretender ever enters. Sham greatness, 
pasteboard heroes, we have in every age, never 
more, perhaps, than now. To their own genera- 
tion they are apt to be greater than the-truly great. 
They, indeed, can be ministered to. It is the 
homage paid them which makes them what they 
are. Their fame is created by their disciples. 
Without a following they were nothing. But the 
crowd collects around them, faces are fixed intently 
on them, their every movement is watched and 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO 23 

every word echoed, admiring thousands hang upon 
their voice, daily columns recount their exploits 
and lend glowing colors to their rhetoric; and, 
behold, they are great. Our hero is made, — born 
to-day, to die to-morrow. But the true hero never 
dies. You need feel no anxiety for his fame or his 
success. You need gather no crowds about him 
nor challenge the world to marvel at his grandeur. 
With your aid or without it, he is equally great. 
You may help his repute or hinder it; he remains 
immortal. 

And this brings us back once more to the point 
from which we started, — to find in the life of 
whom those words were first spoken the finest illus- 
tration of their truth. "The Son of Man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister." He would 
not be ministered to. He saw too many souls 
about him to be aided, too many sorrows to be 
comforted, too many doubts to be answered, too 
much spiritual darkness to be illumined, for him to 
wait for others' ministering. To see such needs 
was to long to supply them. To feel within him 
the power to serve was to put forth that power. 
To know the truth for which other souls were wait- 
ing was to utter it. To minister was the divine 
necessity of his being. It was his soul's great pre- 
rogative, which could not be put aside. Who can 
tell how great a joy may have been his, as he saw 
from day to day the fruits of his ministering, — the 
saddened brow grow bright as he passed, the woe- 
burdened heart made joyous, the trammelled con- 



24 DISCOURSES 

science set free, the selfish thought touched to 
higher sympathies, the narrow nature brought into 
larger relations to humanity, the cynic or distrust- 
ful soul convinced of life's great realities? 

Yes, the life of Jesus was beautiful and note- 
worthy indeed. We shrink even from eulogy, as 
with all sacred things, lest our very praises should 
belittle it. Yet what does it owe (whatever it may 
have accomplished for the world) to any word ever 
spoken in its behalf or any deed ever done in its 
defence? Its service to humanity was great; yet 
what tribute from men has ever exalted Christ's 
real mission to his fellows, or added a feather's 
weight to his divineness? 

While he lived, men tried to serve him. Tender 
hands ministered lovingly to his wants, warning 
voices pleaded with him when he spoke of his com- 
ing death, one sword, at least, leaped from its scab- 
bard, as the hostile band drew near. But they 
could not aid him, save as sympathy always aids. 
Their gentlest solicitude could lend to his life no 
such beauty as lay in the very self-sacrifice from 
which they would fain shield him: their stoutest 
defence could add no such dignity to his career 
as was brought by the cross. 

After his death again, and down to this very 
hour, men have striven to minister to the Son of 
Man. They have sought to enhance his glory and 
heighten his dignity. Out of their littleness, for- 
sooth, they would make him great. Others have 
undervalued him; they must restore his lost maj- 



NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO 25 

esty. His honor is at stake; they must fly to his 
defence, and he will be safe. Thus they have 
protected, exalted, deified, the Son of Man. They 
have made themselves his patrons, his champions, 
his interpreters. They have robed him in honor, 
they have loaded him with titles, they have 
crowned him, they have enthroned him. 

Unaffected by all this anxious care, and su- 
premely above all human patronage, asking no 
defence, safer for no protection, stronger or prouder 
for no homage, and lordlier for no titles, this 
spiritual leader has held his place from age to 
age, strong by his own strength alone, and divine 
simply through his own soul's divineness. Once 
for all he has lived his life and spoken his word, 
and naught which the world can add can ennoble 
the one or enhance the other. 

The homage which men pay to Jesus is beauti- 
ful and honorable; but that homage must be for- 
ever vain, so long as it seeks to honor him by its 
service or has any end in view but grateful recog- 
nition of holiness and truth. And why? Because 
the higher nature must always serve the lower. 
Because the Son of Man came into the world, "not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister." 

1870. 



III. 

WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR. 

"He hath made everything beautiful in his time." — Eccl. iii. n. 

Among the many changes which time is ever 
bringing, one thing seems to remain always the 
same. Generation succeeds to generation, and race 
to race. Religion follows religion, and thought 
follows thought. The world seems hardly the 
same world as in earlier ages, its holiness and 
beauty but things of the past, its heroes and 
saints departed. But sorrow is unchanged. Grief 
touches the heart to-day as keenly as ever before, 
and brings us into fellowship with all the past. 
We know that tears were never more bitter than 
now, nor loneliness ever more desolate, nor more 
precious lives ever taken away than have been 
snatched from our side. 

But how is this, I ask; for it is not of grief 
that I would speak, but of what this grief implies. 
Does it not imply that life itself, with all that be- 
longs to it, is something very precious? But do 
we find it so? Even though we have ceased to 
regard it as a vale of tears, do we not treat its days 
and hours while we have them as of very slight 



WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 2/ 

account? Shall we mourn any soul's departure 
from a world so ignoble? Do not our daily habits, 
I ask, mock this sorrow, and give it the lie? 
These very lives whose loss we so bitterly lament, 
of what have they been made up but of so many 
days and hours, so many affections and feelings, so 
many deeds and words? What value have we at- 
tached to these things? What value do we attach 
to them now? Day follows day, and we seek not 
to delay it. Our homes glow with affection, but 
we deem them of slight worth or find in them 
more burden than joy. Opportunities, duties, 
await us, but only to oppress us. They are a 
weariness and a sorrow. We sigh for the day to 
close. Its value lies for too many of us in the 
repose which it brings. We prize chiefly its 
hours of sleep. Our homes get from us the 
refuse of the day and the refuse of ourselves. 
Friendship comes in for the tattered remnants 
of hours worn out in a baser service. Thought 
receives the drowsy moments which traffic does 
not claim. Even pleasure, with many of us, 
snatches its hours by stealth, and waits wistfully 
its turn when the worn system has lost alike its 
power to toil and its power to enjoy. What right 
have we, then, to this intensity of grief? Are we 
not gilding life as it vanishes with a glory not 
really its own, fancying a passion which the soul 
has never felt? 

Ah, no ! The soul is not wont to counterfeit 
emotion. These hours of passion betray its actual 



28 DISCOURSES 

self. These are true, though all else be false. It 
is these single moments of deep feeling which give 
our daily thoughts the lie. Yes, these earthly 
things are, indeed, all that they seem to us as we 
lose them. Life is, indeed, precious. The hours 
are weighty beyond compare. These souls are holy 
as heaven itself. These ties are sacred, are 
mightier than those which bind star to star. The 
mistake was not to-day when we wept at our friend's 
loss, but yesterday, when the gift was ours and we 
spurned it; not that the affections seem now so 
priceless, but that they once seemed so cheap and 
so common. Let these tears tell their story, tell 
us of great realities which we rarely fathom, tell us 
of friendships known to us only in their going, of 
joys lost because we could not trust them, of com- 
panion souls pure beyond our utmost thought of 
purity, of hours bright with a light beyond our 
common seeing. 

Indeed, I believe there is a truth here which we 
need to apply most literally and in a way which 
seldom occurs to us. If grief to-day is as great as 
ever, then the cause of grief must be as deep as 
ever. If friendships and companionships lost are 
as heart-rending as in the holiest past, then friend- 
ships and companionships, when present, are as 
sacred as in the holiest past. If souls departing 
leave us as desolate, then the souls still with us 
carry with them just as much of heaven; then no 
beauty has passed from earth, no glory from the 
skies, no sanctity from duty, no divineness from 






WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 2Q 

the soul; then God is just as near to man, draws 
just as close to us in our hours of solitude, speaks 
as directly to us in our hours of spiritual emotion; 
then the difference between age and age is not that 
God is at certain times nearer than at others, but 
that the soul is not always sensitive to his ap- 
proaches, not that God sometimes breaks the long 
silence and speaks, but that the ear is not always 
open to his ever-uttered word; not so much that 
some hours are weightier than others with divine 
intent as that the soul is not always present which 
can fathom the passing hour. 

In a word, the one art which man has never 
learned is to take present things at their actual 
worth. At best, he knows how to glory in what 
has been and look forward to what is to be. His 
to-days are never precious, only his yesterdays and 
to-morrows. "Beautiful the thought," he says, 
"that God once dwelt upon the earth and talked 
face to face with man." "Precious the hope," he 
says, "and lovely the dream that heaven awaits the 
faithful and the true." Yes, the past is glorious; 
the future will be heavenly; but alas for the poor 
present! Yet of what has the past been made or is 
the future to consist but of days and hours just like 
these? And, if we know them not now, how shall 
we know them in the future? Though their holi- 
ness be possibly far greater, yet, if we cannot dis- 
cern the lesser beauty, how shall we recognize the 
greater? The future, when it comes, must still be 
the present ; and the test must be then, as now, 



30 DISCOURSES 

Have we learned to prize the moment as it passes? 
Can we enter into present joys? Can we feel a 
present purity and grandeur? We cannot suffi- 
ciently consider that the essence of eternity lies 
in each moment of eternity. Moment for moment, 
they are all the same. The same quality clings to 
each. Eternity has no hours that are not sacred, 
no holiness that is not all holy, no beauty that is 
not- all beautiful, no attribute that is not eternal. 
"Write it on your heart," says Emerson so finely, 
"that every day is the best day of the year. No 
man has learned anything rightly until he knows 
that every day is doomsday." 

I fear that for this false feeling of which I speak 
our religion, in its common utterances, is more to 
blame than we like to confess. It spends so much 
time in illumining the past. It guards those 
sacred shores and sacred seas and sacred mountains 
with so jealous a care. I do not say with so great 
a care or with so grateful a care; I say with so 
jealous a care. It is not content that they are 
holy; they must be alone holy. It is not con- 
tent that souls were then divine; they must be 
alone divine. Forgetting, do we not, that holiness 
then can be learned only through holiness now, and 
that, if the divineness of those souls, or of any 
souls, is to receive our homage, it can only be be- 
cause we have learned to pay homage to the truth 
and excellence which we see around us here. 

Equally at fault is that religion when it thrusts 
the soul's destiny into the future, and makes these 



WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 3 1 

years but a hard season of toiling and tarrying, till 
the time of reward and sorrow comes. But mean- 
time, when it comes, where will be the soul's 
power of meeting it? Shall we not find that we 
have squandered in waiting and hoping the precious 
strength that should have gone into the recognition 
of present joys? God does not thus wait to be 
holy and beneficent and beautiful. For my own 
part, I have never yet found the soul, be it as 
intent and devout as it might, which has succeeded 
in exhausting the wealth which a single hour has 
brought, in penetrating the full meaning of a single 
hour, in doing its full work, in seeing its perfect 
loveliness, in learning its inmost secret. I have 
never found that this life was too long to do this 
life's duty or worship this life's sanctity. Men are 
taught to set against the hardships and rebuffs of 
this state of being the unpurchased joys of another. 
I should count them richer and happier, could they 
turn to account but half the living joys which they 
pass by with dulness or with disdain. Men ask 
anxiously whether in the future they shall still 
recognize those whom they have loved on earth. 
Fond hearts, let them learn to recognize their 
friends on earth, and there will be then some possi- 
bility that they will recognize their friends in 
heaven. Do not deceive yourselves. It is the 
power in the soul that tells. The question is not, 
Shall we have something to revere, but Shall we 
know how to revere? not, Will there be by and by 
something to love, but Shall we know how to love? 



32 DISCOURSES 

The lovely things and the holy never fail; but 
where is the heart to find them? Learn to revere, 
not to cavil, learn to love, not to distrust, and you 
are safe for time and for eternity. Do not forget; 
the great reality is here and now. Eternity can 
be learned only as it passes, not by waiting, but by 
seeing, not if distant, but if present, not because 
the future is full of it, but because the present is 
full of it to the core. Says Emerson again, as only 
he can say: "This miracle is hurled into every 
beggar's hands. The blue sky is a covering for 
a market and for the cherubim and seraphim. 
Nature could no further go. Could our happiest 
dream come to pass in solid fact, could a power 
open our eyes to behold 'millions of spiritual creat- 
ures walk the earth,' I believe I should find that 
mid-plain on which they moved floored beneath 
and arched above with the same web of blue depth 
which weaves itself over me now as I trudge the 
street on my affairs." 

This would seem a simple truth which I am 
urging. And so it certainly is. The point is to 
see things as they really are, that is all. If it is 
beauty which is before us, to see beauty and know 
that it is beautiful; if purity, to see purity and 
recognize it as such; if holiness, to see holiness; 
if moral greatness, to see greatness; if truth, to 
see truth and adore it. What I claim is that 
beauty is always present, and goodness and sweet- 
ness and harmony, in far greater measure at least 
than we ever appreciate, awaiting only the sense to 



WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 33 

discern them. What I claim is that every day has 
hours in it of possible manliness and nobleness, of 
possible honesty and joy, if only the heart be ready 
to see its opportunity and act. What is lacking 
is the power to see things as they are. Things are 
lovely; they look plain. Things are rare; they 
look common. We have seen them often before. 
The act has momentous consequences; it looks 
insignificant. We may perform it as we choose. 
The hour involves great issues; it seems trifling. 
We may spend it as carelessly as we wish. What 
is lacking, then, I repeat, is the power to see into 
the real nature of all these things, and understand 
their very worth. 

But because this is a simple thought, do not 
think it is a slight or easy task. The world has 
not found it so. The fault of which I speak is a 
common one, running through all passages of man's 
experiences. Wherever man has stood face to face 
with God's universe, whether physical, moral, or 
spiritual, he has seen anything and everything but 
what was really there. He has seen what he 
thought to see, what he longed to see, what he 
feared to see, what he hoped to see, what he was 
told to see, what he was resolved to see, what he 
supposed that others saw, never, or rarely, the very 
thing that was there, and that alone. How long it 
was before the artist learned to see the forms which 
he wished to paint! Before he saw them, I say. 
The hand learned to trace the line as soon as the 
eye learned to see it, but the eye did not see it. 



34 DISCOURSES 

You have seen often the little boy's first attempt 
with pencil or pen. He draws upon his slate his 
father's house or his uncle's ship, and is sure he 
has seen just such houses on the street and just 
such ships upon the sea. Somewhat like these are 
the earliest remains that have come down to us of 
human art, — rude, uncouth figures, with expression- 
less eyes and features, set in landscapes without 
grace or proportion or perspective. Yet once these 
were thought beautiful and true, and wondering 
thousands found in those trees and that grass the 
portraiture of nature herself and in those gaunt 
faces of saints and apostles the light of an illu- 
mined soul. Art labored through many stages be- 
fore the first tree was drawn or the first blade of 
grass was painted as it grows; and art labored 
through many stages more before men learned to 
detect the false from the true, the traditional from 
the real, or to prefer nature's trees and grasses to 
the painter's conventional presentment of them. In 
other words, art waited long before the artist 
learned to see c In very fact, the world is waiting 
still for the artist to learn to see and to teach 
others to see, — to see in nature just what is there, 
and only what is there, to find in every stone and 
fern their very form and coloring, and to show 
them upon the canvas as ten times more beautiful 
than any ideal stone or fern that was ever drawn. 
And how patiently nature herself is waiting, — not 
for the trained artist's eye or hand to trace her 
hidden beauties, but for you and me to see what 



WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 35 

she is daily spreading before our eyes, the splendor 
of earth and air and sky which surrounds our daily 
steps, how patiently she is waiting for leaf and 
moss and stone and cloud and hill and sea no 
longer to be passed scornfully by or trodden heed- 
lessly under foot, but to be seen and known and 
loved as the miracles they are, that I need not tell 
you. 

And what is true of nature's beauties is true of 
all things else with which man has had to deal. 
What he sees first, strangely enough, is the distant, 
the impossible, the unreal. What he sees last is 
the near, the present, the real. From imagination 
to fact, from idea to reality, from what is not there 
to what is, from fancied wonders to actual wonders 
which surpass all fancy, behold the inevitable path. 
Not only have nature's beauties faced man from the 
beginning, but so have nature's forces and nature's 
laws, Lightnings nave flashed, and planets have 
circled, and winds have blown, and suns have risen 
and set, and tides have flowed, and water has turned 
to ice, and soil and air have fed the growing tree 
since man first lived upon the earth. But how 
long before he saw these things ! And how many 
grotesque and impossible things which are not 
there did he see — how many fish swallowing the 
moon, and tortoises supporting the earth, and pranc- 
ing steeds and chariot drawing the sun, and crystal 
spheres embedding the planets, and brazen firma- 
ment encircling the stars — before his eye discerned 
the real forms and movements that had been always 



36 DISCOURSES 

passing before it! The science of physical things 
(science as we call it) has progressed just so fast 
as the eye has learned to see, not its own fancies, 
but nature's facts. 

The difficulty, then, is great. The problem is a 
universal one. The passing hour glides by un- 
valued, daily life remains paltry and mean, lovely 
souls live and die unnoticed, or die revealing for 
the first time in their very departure their loveli- 
ness, lifelong friendships are unfruitful, and daily 
companionship is barren, generous spirits are unap- 
preciated, and tender consciences are taunted and 
mocked, holy lives are deemed irreligious, and the 
prophet of new thought is persecuted, Messiahs are 
crucified, and the higher truth is scorned and 
denied, for the very same reason that the blade of 
grass is trampled by a thousand feet before the one 
passer-by discovers its beauty, or the over-arching 
heavens are gazed upon for centuries before the eye 
knows that it is peering into fathomless depths. 

Take this thought home to your hearts, good 
friends, that the saint'liest souls that have ever 
lived have never outworn the sanctity of a single 
day, that the wisest souls that have ever lived have 
never exhausted the meaning of a single hour, that 
the busiest lives ever spent have never fully used 
the opportunities close at hand. Do not be di- 
verted from this one thought. Life's greatest 
realities are here and now; and yet because here 
in your hands, before your eyes, remember that 
they are not therefore easier, but harder to value 



WORTH OF THE PRESENT HOUR 37 

and realize. From time immemorial it has been 
easy to dream and hard to act, easy to plan and 
hard to execute, easy to imagine and hard to 
realize, easy to put the heavens above the clouds, 
hard to strive for a heaven on earth, easy to 
postpone salvation to the future, hard to accomplish 
it in the present, easy to people another world with 
saints and harps and halos and crowns, hard to dis- 
cern the harmony and possible holiness of this. 

I may seem to have wandered from the theme 
with which I began, but I have not. I spoke then 
of the strange contrast between our lives, each with 
each, that seem for the most part so sterile and 
unlovely, and our passionate grief when for any 
choice spirit that life is ended. Incongruous, in- 
deed ; yet it is not the grief which is at fault, but 
the life. The intensity of our sorrow uncovers for 
us the realities of our life, the richness of the hours 
which pass uncounted, the joy of the intercourse 
which so often goes unheeded. It cannot harm us 
to be reminded at times how great are the depths 
beneath us on whose surface we are content to live, 
how divinely beautiful the hours which we cast 
away, how far beyond our brightest dreams of 
future bliss is the joy which, could we but have 
known it, but just now was ours. Perchance in 
time this will help us to prize the passing hour. 
Perhaps it will teach us to use the blessings that 
are actually ours. Perhaps it will show us, behind 
the changing face of these fleeting hours, the 
changeless features of eternity. 

1872. 



IV. 

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. 

" When I am weak, then am I strong." — 2 Cor. xii. 10. 

As we look around in the world to-day, what a 
mighty being seems man. Nothing so bold that he 
does not undertake it, no task so gigantic that he 
does not achieve it. He crosses continents as 
though they were but states, and oceans as though 
they were but streams. He tunnels mountains; 
he speaks across the seas; he flies towards the 
stars. He annihilates space; he extinguishes 
time; he turns darkness into light; he makes 
the sunbeam audible and music visible. To man 
nothing is impossible. 

But it is not of these extraordinary feats that I 
would speak to-day. Let us look at some of his 
commoner exploits. Here, as we pass through the 
streets, we see him turning a wheel, and a mon- 
strous block of stone, ten times his own weight, 
rises high into the air, and drops into the exact 
place prepared for it. There he opens a hydrant, 
and a mass of water six or twenty miles away 
begins to move its huge volume towards him. 
There again he fires a few grains of powder, and a 



STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 39 

heavy iron ball flies through the air, and buries 
itself in a bank or pierces a thick iron plate five 
miles away. 

These are all familiar exploits. They have 
ceased even to seem strange to us; nor do I bring 
them up to-day to excite any new wonder in your 
breasts or to produce from them any rhetorical 
effects, but only that we may see wherein this 
power over nature lies. To understand the use I 
would make of them, let us take any single case 
and examine it more closely. Here is the most 
familiar perhaps of all. You are accustomed every 
day to bring water into your houses from some 
miles away. The mere action of your thumb and 
finger alone is needed, and gallons or, if you 
choose, hogsheads of water rise from the street to 
your highest chamber. But to lift a hogshead of 
water twenty or thirty feet, great force is needed. 
Who provides that force? Not you certainly with 
your thumb and finger; not the engineer who built 
the dam or pump, or by whose calculations the 
gateways and pipes have been placed and the pas- 
sage for the water prepared. With the united 
muscular force of twenty thousand workmen he 
could not lift the mass of water which in every 
large city rises daily to the tops of the highest 
buildings. Where, then, is the force that does 
this work? The force, as you know, is in the 
water itself, in its own weight. It is simply the 
water seeking its level, to use the popular phrase. 
All that man has done in the premises is to avail 



40 DISCOURSES 

himself of one of nature's simplest laws, and make 
it serve his purposes. He has done everything 
except provide the power which is to act. 

And what more has he done in any of the grand 
achievements which I have mentioned? What 
strength of his is it that raises the block of granite 
or starts the locomotive or sends the cannon-ball 
to its mark? Puny atom that he is, let but a cord 
snap or a flaw show itself in the iron, and he is 
crushed into a lifeless mass. Let him forget for a 
single moment the character of the material or the 
forces he is handling, and his life pays the forfeit. 

It is not man, then, that is strong here, it is 
nature. Nature is mighty, and full of resistless 
power. Man is powerless in these matters except 
as he puts himself in connection with nature, 
learns her laws, and avails himself of her secrets. 
At best, he is but the channel through which 
nature's forces act. At best, he but knows how to 
turn her strength to account, and make it appear as 
if it were his own. Most accomplished of magi- 
cians, he dazzles us with brilliant feats, splendid 
tricks of brain or hand, while all the time it is a 
power behind himself and invisible to the spectator 
which is accomplishing the results. 

It is not man that is strong, it is nature. I do 
not say this in disparagement. I am only trying 
to define his position. Indeed, what could be 
more admirable or more wonderful? Weak him- 
self, a tiny speck upon the earth's surface, let him 
but put himself in the right relations with the uni- 



STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 41 

verse in which God has placed him, and all her 
colossal strength is his. Whatever end he seeks, 
he has but to set the right instrumentalities in 
play, and the very powers of heaven come down to 
serve him. Unknown forces stand always ready 
to do man's bidding. Let him but summon them 
to his side, and they lend infinite cunning to his 
hand, resistless strength to his arm, telescopic 
vision to his eye, miraculous hearing to his ear, 
lightning speed to his feet. 

Again is the case wholly different when we con- 
sider those powers which are purely personal, such, 
for instance, as our intellectual faculties. Man 
is a being of thought, of reason, of imagination. 
Think of the marvellous deeds he sometimes per- 
forms. Think of the effort of memory by which 
a young girl repeats word for word in the morning 
a long discourse which she has heard the night 
before; of the force of imagination which could 
call a Hamlet or a Sistine Madonna into being; of 
the speculative processes which could produce the 
" Principia." Nay, to come down to familiar things, 
think even of the common feats which your mind 
or mine is performing every day, the memories, the 
reasonings, the speculations, the insights, all un- 
conscious often, through whose aid we lead our 
daily lives. Who can explain any of these things? 
Who can tell whence this power comes or how it 
acts? Is it any conscious effort of your own or 
simple act of will by which you recall the events 
or visions of twenty years ago or by which they 



42 DISCOURSES 

once photographed themselves upon your mind? 
In your highest mental tasks are you not availing 
yourselves of certain psychological laws, certain 
apparently automatic habits of association or per- 
ception or deduction, without whose aid you would 
be powerless? In your thoughts have you not the 
entire thinking activities of the race behind you? 
Not forgetting for a moment the vast differences 
between mind and mind or attempting to explain 
these mysteries, yet how, after all, could this great 
superiority of one over another be attained save 
through a greater facility in employing nature's 
laws of thought, a longer established adjustment, if 
you will (whether by inheritance or otherwise), of 
the mind to the ways of true thinking? What 
power has the boldest thinker to evoke the thoughts 
he wishes out of nothingness? What power has 
the strongest mind to build itself up on principles 
of its own, in defiance of these inscrutable but all- 
comprehensive laws ? Who governs his thoughts in 
the same sense in which the steersman guides the 
ship? What imaginative nature masters its imagi- 
nation, and is not rather mastered by it? As 
Michael Angelo was wont to declare that the 
marble statue he was carving was no work of his 
own, but only a form complete from the first and 
concealed within the stone, waiting simply to be 
released by his chisel from the covering that veiled 
it, why cannot man's best thoughts be described 
as pre-existent ideas, released, at slight effort of 
his own, from the great universe of truth? We 



i 



STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 43 

need not disparage man or mind; only let us 
admire this marvellous provision by which what- 
ever is rarest or profoundest in the realm of thought 
stands ready to visit him who knows how to call it 
to his aid. 

Whether it is mind or matter that is in question 
then, we find ourselves part of the universe in 
which we live; not an unconscious fragment of the 
greater whole, but an intelligent centre, gathering 
to itself and using as it will the mighty currents of 
being which are in ceaseless action around it. Try 
to isolate yourself from the world and trust to your 
own individual forces, and you are miserably weak. 
Place yourself in harmony with your surroundings 
and in intelligent contact with their life, and noth- 
ing is impossible. Strength untold, wisdom un- 
measured, joy incalculable, lend themselves to your 
service. 

It is somewhat in this way that I like to under- 
stand the striking words which I have chosen as 
my text. Like many another before and since, 
Paul had been called upon to face evils and calami- 
ties which seemed far beyond his own power to 
meet; yet the power had come to him, and the evil 
was surmounted. "In stripes above measure" (to 
give his own pathetic catalogue of his trials), " in 
prisons frequent, in death oft. Of the Jews five 
times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice 
was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice 
I suffered shipwreck, a day and a night I have been 
in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of 



44 DISCOURSES 

waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own 
countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in 
the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in 
the sea, in perils among false brethren ; in weari- 
ness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger 
and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and naked- 
ness." Yet out of weakness had come strength; 
and, in the joy of that newly discovered power, he 
rejoiced in the very sorrows which had revealed it. 
"Therefore I take pleasure," he says, "in infirmi- 
ties, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecution, 
in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am 
weak, then I am strong." 

The experience of which Paul here speaks, if I 
understand it aright, seems to be this. Great evils 
visit every one of us at times, which, as they 
approach, seem ready to overwhelm us. We feel 
no strength in ourselves to encounter them. Sor- 
row threatens which shows no hope of possible joy 
beyond, bereavement which must needs leave the 
soul forever desolate, a darkness through which no 
gieam of light or happiness can ever penetrate. 
Yet the hour comes, and the trial is met. Nay, 
the trial is not only met and surmounted, but out of 
it comes a degree of fortitude and of endurance of 
which we had not dreamed. The bereavement falls 
upon us, and instead of the blank desolation we 
had foreseen come rich resources of sympathy and 
companionship hitherto unknown. The sorrow 
settles down upon our heart, and yet out of it come 
actual joys of which till then the soul was simply 



STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 45 

incapable. I am not speaking here rhetorically 
nor conventionally. I am speaking of the actual 
experiences, as I believe, of human souls, of souls 
not too shallow to feel profoundly, and therefore 
forgetting their sorrows at once, but of souls ear- 
nest enough to discover deeper sources of comfort 
and joy. Tears have flowed like rain, to be lighted 
again by smiles of holy joy; and that, not because 
the tears came from the surface of the heart, and 
so passed soon away, but because the heart had won 
for itself meantime a larger capacity of feeling 
and emotion. The closest ties of affection have 
been rudely sundered, yet new and unexpected 
interests have sprung up in the very midst of the 
desolation, not because the old affection lacked 
tenderness or loyalty, but because the heart had 
acquired a larger power of love. In no single case 
of sorrow, perhaps, even though the bitterness be 
greater than was anticipated, do we find ourselves 
as powerless as we thought. 

Nor is the explanation of this hard to find, so far 
as we can ever explain these spiritual experiences. 
As you looked forward to the coming sorrow, you 
thought only of your own power or your existing 
resources in meeting it. You measured yourself 
against it, and you were indeed powerless. You 
looked into your own heart, and there were no 
reserves of fortitude and endurance equal to so vast 
a strain. But the hour came, and behold strength 
flowed in upon you from unknown sources. You 
opened your bereft soul to the skies, cried out in 



46 DISCOURSES 

your sorrow, and behold the heavens bowed them- 
selves and came down to your side. Xo human 
strength awaited you in that supreme hour. It was 
a divine strength. You were not alone. You had 
the entire heavens above you and the whole uni- 
verse behind you, intent upon re-enforcing your 
weakness and filling the waste solitudes with new 
forms of life. You were drawing from infinite 
sources. Weak yourself, you had but to unclose 
your heart to the entrance of heavenly powers, and 
they came thronging in to make your breast their 
abode. In your weakness, you for the first time 
discovered your strength. At the end of your own 
devices, you looked around you and above you to 
find exhaustless resources, from which you were to 
draw at will. Crushed to the dust, you looked up 
to see holy spirits of love and comfort and peace 
condescending to your low estate, and stooping to 
set you upon your feet, and whisper to you that 
you were resting on an eternal rock. 

In a word, if I can read these ways aright, when 
the moment of weakness and despair comes, you 
find that the conditions of endurance of peace and 
of trust are not determined for you alone, or part of 
your individual being, or holding their sway within 
your single breast. They are universal laws. It 
is not your will which created them, nor your neces- 
sities which will exhaust them. The strength, the 
comfort, the joy, which you seek, are not powers 
which come and go in your petty life. They are 
forces of the moral universe, moving: in vaster cur- 






STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 47 

rents, sweeping onward ever in ceaseless motion, 
passing by the souls that seek them not, but enter- 
ing in wherever they are summoned, to bring their 
heavenly messages of peace and love. This, I say, 
is the strength which is born out of weakness. It 
is the sudden recognition, borne in upon us as we 
come to the end of our own strength, of the larger 
life of which these little lives of ours are a part. 
It is the consciousness, into which some great crisis 
startles us, that our own being is but a point in the 
spiritual universe, through which a mightier life 
than ours forever ebbs and flows. Imagine your- 
self, if you can, cut off in your hour of sorrow from 
the entire world, and actually thrown upon your 
own resources, imagine all companionship and sym- 
pathy and all consciousness of other lives withdrawn 
from you, imagine the entire play of thought and 
feeling which passes from heart to heart to cease, 
imagine no star in the heavens even to hint to you 
of other lives than yours, and no power beyond the 
stars to speak to you of eternal things, and you can 
form some idea of that larger life of which I speak 
as surrounding and engulfing our own, and of that 
more abiding strength on which in our moments of 
great need, if we would stand at all, we must con- 
sent to lean. Evidently, this strength which sus- 
tains us, if we be sustained, is not wholly from 
within. It is the play of universal forces, includ- 
ing all our individual forces in their sweep and 
adding their eternal strength to ours. Yes, the 
whole universe is mine. I turn to it in hours of 



48 DISCOURSES 

weariness; and its majesty and beauty sweep in 
upon me like a flood, and fill my being full. I 
turn to it in hours of weakness and discontent, 
drink at its fountains of exhaustless energy, and 
am strong. I turn to it in disquiet or inward 
strife; and, in the eternal calm of its forests and 
its seas, I find myself at rest. 

You will see, I think, the point towards which 
this thought is leading us. Fortunately, it is not 
for us to draw the exact line which separates our 
own lives from the vaster life about us. Many 
strive, indeed, to draw that line, and tell us pre- 
cisely how much is human and how much divine. 
Let me urge upon you the better thought, which 
seeks no such distinction, but is content to know 
that both are in some sense one. Religion has no 
higher task than to persuade us that these lives of 
ours are, indeed, part of the eternal spirit ; that it is 
in God that we " live and move and have our being." 
There is no graver peril than that we shall accus- 
tom ourselves to look upon our daily acts in their 
immediate bearings alone, and follow them only to 
their instant consequences. There is nothing more 
needful than to learn to see in these hourly rela- 
tions of friend with friend the play of abiding 
affection, in these common transactions of man 
with man the reign of absolute justice, in this 
daily service of duty, joy, and sorrow the experi- 
ences of eternal souls. That which distinguishes 
the noble life from the petty, the earnest from the 
trivial, the religious from the irreligious, is this 



STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 49 

feeling that none of life's concerns are paltry or 
common, but that our duties, our studies, our com- 
panionships, our domestic ties, our conversation, 
and our traffic all have in them a deeper meaning 
and a more lasting importance than appears. The 
central thought of our religious faith, at once its 
most practical and its most spiritual, is this : that 
our lives are but part of the eternal life of God. 

Therefore it is that I have tried to lead you 
on from trivial beginnings to this highest point of 
faith. If we would produce any great mechanical 
result, we have (as we have seen) but to arrange 
our machinery, and we know that all the forces 
of heat, of electricity, or of gravitation, will press 
forward to do the work. It is not our own strength 
to which we look. It is to elemental powers, 
mightier far than we, yet ready always to serve us, 
and which never yet were known to fail. And so 
in these moral and spiritual lives which we are 
leading. Weak ourselves, we are strong in the 
elemental powers of justice, purity, holiness, love, — 
powers which wait simply our bidding, and which 
have never yet been known to fail. In no extrem- 
ity of evil, of disappointment, of suffering, of sor- 
row, can we be alone; for the Father is with us. 
We cannot be alone; for the God of justice, the 
God of goodness and of love, is at our side. Open 
your hearts towards purity, and the very purity of 
heaven will enter into your soul, and dwell there. 
Open your soul towards integrity, desire it, invite 
it, and you will find yourself armed at every point, 



50 DISCOURSES 

and eternal truth itself fighting all your battles 
against falsehood and fraud. And, finally, in your 
hours of doubt and grief, open your soul towards 
the higher peace, let the deep experiences you 
have won and the bitter suffering you have endured 
do for you their perfect work; and behold out of 
the very weakness of your soul, out of its bereave- 
ment and desolation, will come heavenly compan- 
ionships and a divine and enduring strength. 

1878. 



V. 
OUR DEAD. 

" Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead." — Matt. viii. 22. 

This is almost the only instance where the words 
of Jesus sound harsh or ungracious, or where he 
seems to forget even for a moment the feelings of 
others. One of his disciples, it seems, had ex- 
pressed a willingness to follow his Master, and 
share his trials with him, provided only he might 
first go and bury his father. "But Jesus said unto 
him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead." 
So the passage exactly reads. Must we infer, then, 
that he wished to chide his follower's grief or make 
light of it? Are we to infer that high concerns, 
like those in which Jesus was engaged, lead to the 
suppression of the heart's natural emotions? Does 
devotion to duty or truth forbid the indulgence of 
the affections, and leave no time to tarry at a 
friend's grave or pay a parting tribute to his mem- 
ory? Is the higher life so absorbing that it be- 
grudges us these few brief moments, brief enough 
at best, of privacy and silence while grief is fresh? 
Must we seal the tomb, or leave others to seal it, 
then go our way hastily, as though no tomb were 
there? 



52 DISCOURSES 

Harsh words, as I have said, if this be indeed 
the meaning of our text; yet is there not something 
in them not wholly unfamiliar in our own experi- 
ences? Does not the world seem to us cold and 
heartless at times, as it hurries past our sorrows 
and goes its way quite unconcerned? Does not life 
often seem cruelly impatient, stopping for a single 
moment to pay its homage to some lofty soul which 
had but just now seemed absolutely essential to its 
welfare, then hastily closing up its ranks and press- 
ing forward as though nothing important had 
occurred? We speak to-day of certain vacant 
places which never can be filled; yet do we not 
know that the world will adjust itself at once to 
its new conditions, and go on undisturbed? What 
life so important that the world really needs, or 
acknowledges at least that it needs, it? Have we 
not at times reproached ourselves for accepting 
our new position so readily, suffering the grave 
to close in so quickly upon our sorrows, and life to 
reassert its claims, and duty and sordid care to 
intrude themselves so soon upon our rare and sacred 
hours? And may not this busy modern life grow 
ever more exacting, till it grants the affections no 
quiet moments, and leaves us no single hour to 
hold counsel with the past or ask questions of the 
future ? 

But let us return for a moment to our text. Pos- 
sibly we do not have these words of Jesus exactly 
in their original connection. Some circumstance 
there may have been which, if we could recover it, 



OUR DEAD 53 

would soften their apparent harshness. Among 
many conjectures on this point, it has been sug- 
gested that in uttering this rebuke he had in mind 
the exaggerated and artificial demonstrations of 
grief then prevailing. The funeral ceremonials of 
those days, according to all descriptions, were pro- 
longed, elaborate, and turbulent. Hired mourners, 
women rending their garments and tearing their 
hair, loud shouts and songs, heightened by noisy 
instruments, were perhaps the accompaniments of 
sorrow which Jesus wished to condemn. In the 
very next chapter of this Gospel he is described as 
summoned to a ruler's house whose daughter lay 
dead, and are told that, "when he came into the 
ruler's house and saw the minstrels and the people 
making a noise, he said unto them, Give place." 
If it was at this ostentation and extravagance of 
grief, mimicked under some form or other in all 
later ages, that his words were aimed, they assume 
a different tone, indeed. Grief needs no artifice 
or excess, he would say, to heighten its emotions. 
Give simple utterance to the heart's natural feel- 
ing, and go your way. "Follow me" where duties 
are grave and life presses upon us its unceasing 
cares. The world will not pause while you 
abandon yourself to your grief. It cannot. It 
calls you back in urgent tones, not to forget your 
loss, but to be chastened and strengthened by it, 
not to bury it forever in the past, but to cherish it 
as a living incentive and power for good. It is 
the glory of the past, not to dim or overshadow 



54 DISCOURSES 

the present, but to lend to it fresh courage and a 
new and higher grace. The past is of worth only 
as it lives again in to-day. "Let the dead bury 
their dead." 

And is not this, on the whole, the direction in 
which the world is to-day tending? The world is 
older than it was; and the growing experience of 
ages shows itself, does it not, in a greater self- 
mastery in the presence of calamity and a larger 
comprehension of the scheme of things, in which 
death, pathetic as are its lessons, is but a passing 
incident. With the world's advancing culture 
comes less and less of demonstration, greater re- 
straint, a greater simplicity, and greater readiness 
to take calmly up again life's interrupted duties. 
The funeral ceremonials of a generation ago or the 
passionate ebullitions of certain races to-day would 
be to us intolerable, a mere burlesque and counter- 
feit of sorrow. If there is danger of running to the 
other extreme in our modern self-suppression, it is, 
on the whole, a healthy, as well as an inevitable, 
change. It means not only that, as the world's 
manhood approaches, we are learning to control our 
emotions, nor merely that the intellect is getting 
the mastery over the heart ; it means also that with 
the expansion of knowledge and thought, with our 
deeper insight into the eternal order of things, 
and our power of sending the imagination backward 
and forward into realms unvisited by it before, 
comes a juster apprehension of the proportion and 
significance of these passing trials. They mean 



OUR DEAD 55 

more, and yet not so much, bring a profounder 
experience, yet shape themselves more easily and 
quietly in accordance with the supreme intent. 
To-day falls more willingly into its appointed 
place, and to-morrow is readier for its tasks. It 
is not that the heart loses its sensitiveness or the 
soul its tenderness or its capacity of grief, which 
would be progress backward, indeed. It is rather 
that life becomes to us ever greater and mightier 
than death, and duty a grander term than sadness 
or loss. The world asserts a larger claim than 
ever before, but a claim which it easily makes 
good. Its work is ampler, its needs are more 
imperative, its scheme and purpose are diviner. 

How the ancient writers loved to depict the 
nothingness of human life, and the slight mark 
which all men leave behind them when they are 
gone! "All those things are passed away like a 
shadow, and as a post that hasted by and as a ship 
that passeth over the waves of the water, which 
when it is gone by the trace thereof cannot be 
found, neither the pathway of the keel in the 
waves, or as, when a bird has flown through the 
air, there is no token of her way to be found, but 
the light air being beaten by the stroke of her 
wings and parted by the violent noise and motion 
of them is passed through, and therein afterwards 
no sign where she went is to be found, or like as, 
when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, 
which immediately cometh together again, so that 
a man cannot know where it went through, even so 



56 DISCOURSES 

we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began 
to draw to our end, and had no sign of virtue to 
show. The hope of the ungodly is like the dust 
that is blown away with the wind, like a thin froth 
that is driven away by the storm, and passeth away 
as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a 
day." 

Our modern poets, as they recur to this theme, 
show a still finer and more discriminating touch: — 

" Then, when I have descended, and die stone 

Above the stairway has been set, 
The tears of those who reckoned me their own 

A little space will wet 
The grass ; but soon all saddened days 
Count up to comforted and busy years : 

All living men must go their ways 
And leave their dead behind. The tideless light 
Of sun and moon and stars, silence of night 
And noise of day, and whirling of the great 

Round world itself, yea, 
All things which are and are not work to lay 

The dead away." 

And what does this mean? Not certainly that 
the great and good are to be forgotten as soon as 
they die. Not that our own loved ones are to pass 
at once from our thoughts, as though they had 
never been. It means only that the world is 
greater than any who have dwelt in it and life itself 
larger than any single souls that have lived in it. 
It means that our seasons of sorrow are sacred 
hours of reconsecration, not hours of nerveless 
despair. It means that the hurrying ranks of those 



OUR DEAD 57 

who really work and live cannot pause at the graves 
of the fallen for idle grief, but catch up their 
lives at once into their own, and press forward for 
the higher and larger tasks which those lives have 
made possible. Our best homage is paid, not in 
clamorous reiteration of our loss, but in calm 
recognition of what the departed have been or have 
accomplished. What each generation asks of the 
next is to prove the value of its work already done 
by carrying it forward without delay, if need be 
in wider and loftier ways. Even though, as we 
sometimes feel, the best nobleness and vigor of 
the race, the dignity of its manhood, and the 
splendor of its thought are already beneath the 
sod, none the less do the departed call upon us 
to take what places are ours, and fill them well, 
even though theirs are to stand forever empty. 

I am sorry to bring such a tone of sadness into 
this first hour of our gathering here, — hour of glad 
greetings and friendly reunion, as it should be, 
after many weeks of separation. But, alas! my 
pen refuses to take up any other theme. There 
are too many vacant places here, too many lonely 
homes and aching hearts among us, for us to think 
now of aught besides the desolation which these 
ruthless hours have wrought. 

Seasons there are when nature seems to have 
grown suddenly pitiless, when she seems intent 
upon crowding into the shortest space the utmost 
possible amount of suffering and loss, as if to re- 
mind us how helplessly these poor lives of ours lie 



58 DISCOURSES 

in her grasp; seasons when at once the tenderest 
and most loved, the strongest and most helpful, the 
wisest and most needed, are snatched abruptly 
away, and the world left to go on as it may with- 
out them; seasons when one good name after an- 
other is struck rudely into the dust, as though 
human honor were a thing of naught, and when 
quiet villages are shaken to their foundations, as 
though innocence and helplessness were worthy of 
no protection and no thought. Such scenes have 
followed each other without pause within the few 
brief hours since last we met together here, — fair 
summer hours made apparently for recreation and 
repose, hours when we have sought for ourselves 
the calm seclusion of the mountain, the ocean, and 
the lake, but hours when every mail brought tid- 
ings of disaster and the daily paper became a daily 
journal of disgrace and woe. In all these losses 
we, alas! have shared; all save one. For us, hap- 
pily, there have been no tidings of disgrace, no 
losses whose distress must be mingled with that 
saddest of all sorrows, the sense of shame. For us 
death leaves behind no memories on which we can- 
not dwell with gladness and pride, however keen 
and bitter be our sense of loss. 

Ah, yes! The future looks dark and deserted; 
for the nation to-day, as well as we, is weeping 
over its losses. Yet the world is large, as we have 
seen, and its scheme is vast, vaster than any of 
the souls which it contains. The world will not 
confess that any of its children, even its greatest, 



OUR DEAD 59 

are essential to its needs, or that its resources are 
ever quite exhausted. If one place is left vacant, 
it has a hundred others waiting to be filled. The 
great of one generation but make the path of the 
next, if not more splendid, yet richer in meaning 
and fuller of possibilities. They come, not to 
exhaust the world's excellence or leave it barren, 
but to set more and higher tasks for those who 
remain. This very sense of irreparableness which 
attends their loss is the best proof that their work 
is done, that their companions have caught the pur- 
pose of their lives, and that their spirit has entered 
into the hearts of men, not again to disappear. 
Next to rivalling a noble life is to appreciate and 
honor it. The void it leaves is an incentive to 
other forms of excellence. One type of virtue, 
though never exactly reproduced, makes another 
more possible. Our politics can never sink to 
quite the depths to which they might have fallen 
but for those stainless knights who have fought to 
the death, against such hopeless odds, to protect 
our country's honor. Their names will not die. 
They will stand through all time for political pu- 
rity and integrity. Their places will not be filled, 
— no man's place is ever filled a second time; but 
they will have made other places necessary for 
other souls to fill. 

Take one striking and well-known illustration of 
the power of a noble life, though itself cut off pre- 
maturely, to perpetuate itself in other careers. 
Less than a dozen years ago a young Oxford stu- 



60 DISCOURSES 

dent, seized with a passionate desire to elevate 
the suffering classes, and believing that more of 
humanity as well as more of justice could be 
infused into the problems of social science, set 
himself to bringing face to face the sore wants and 
wrongs of the poor and the educated intelligence 
which had been so long standing at a distance and 
striving to relieve them. Snatched away by an 
early death, while his practical schemes were but 
just formulated, his place has never been exactly 
filled, nor do we know precisely what his lofty and 
unsparing enthusiasm might have done for suffering 
humanity; yet others sprang forward at once, in 
affectionate homage to his memory, to initiate the 
experiment to which his short life had been so 
unselfishly given. Though Toynbee himself died, 
yet his spirit has passed into the wide-spread Toyn- 
bee movement; and his name stands, both in Eng- 
land and in America, for that effort to break 
through the barriers of class, and find one's way 
into the actual needs and feelings of others, which 
has created some of the sweetest and most effectual 
forms of modern charity. The world has honored 
him beyond any of its monarchs, whom it has borne 
to their graves with stately ceremonial and for whom 
it has draped itself for months in the habiliments of 
woe. What prouder immortality could he himself 
have asked, what finer proof that his life had done 
its work, what sweeter reward at the hands of his 
fellow-men? And what better homage can the dead 
ever ask of us than to find their way into our actual 



OUR DEAD 6l 

lives, to chasten our thoughts, to strengthen our 
courage, to ennoble our aims ? Not that they would 
have us hurry back from their graves into the bust- 
ling world, which, ere the last word is spoken, is 
clamoring for our return. In the midst of busiest 
cares, it cannot harm us if our minds be haunted 
for a time by memories of those who have just laid 
their work aside. Nothing so wholesome or in- 
vigorating, if the true sentiment be there, as to keep 
the departed still in mind. Never, indeed, do we 
see our friends so clearly or understand them so 
fully or value them so fitly as when they are just 
withdrawn from our sight, when their lives have 
assumed already a completed instead of a fragmen- 
tary form, yet before the actual facts have faded or 
imagination has taken the place of memory. And 
yet, when all is said, their memory is more honored 
in its silent effect upon our thoughts and acts than 
in any passing demonstration of our sorrow; and 
the value of their lives lies in just that quality 
which, in spite of ourselves, persists, and will not 
die. 

So life hastens on, and closes all its gaps as soon 
as they are made. The generations pass, but the 
world survives. Men perish, but man remains; 
and no single life, with any potency of purpose in 
it, is ever thrown away or comes to nought. In 
our conscious thought or our unconscious habits or 
moods, the spirit which has vanished from our 
sight lives on, and knows no death. "Go on," our 
text says to us, "and do the work unfalteringly 



62 DISCOURSES 

which those vanished lives have enabled you to do." 
"Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead." 

One other thought our text has for us before we 
leave it. It bids us lay aside, in the grave of the 
departed, all protests, all feeling that the course of 
events has been grievously turned aside to our harm, 
and might have been other than it was. Once for 
all, "Let the dead bury their dead." What these 
words tell us is that there are no accidents in our 
earthly lives, that what to human eye is chance to 
the divine intent is the working of eternal laws. 
Neither our own lives nor the lives of those most 
dependent on us are put wholly in our hands. 
Numberless the possibilities of peril which lie on 
every hand, not one of them to be anticipated by 
us, not one unknown to the infinite wisdom and 
love. Without accepting the old doctrine of fate, 
we may believe that these events all take their 
place in the eternal plans, and could not be other 
than they are. We do our best, as it seems at the 
moment; the rest is for other hands than ours, 
and for hands that never err. Were we to try to 
avert or escape all danger, life would be spent 
wholly in striving not to die; and, when all was 
done, the peril would spring up where least we ex- 
pected it. Happy parties of travellers circumnavi- 
gate the globe, and come gayly home, out of count- 
less dangers of forest, glacier, and ocean, to find 
some dear friend thrown from his horse or crushed 
upon the road within sight of his doors. Young 
men have returned from our war unwounded out of 



OUR DEAD 63 

twenty battles to find a brother or sister killed by 
some false step on their very threshold. Foolish 
and brainless adventurers have within these few 
weeks floated safely through the rapids of Niagara, 
over which no soul had passed before alive, while 
quiet dwellers beneath their own roofs have heard 
the solid walls of their houses crumbling in sudden 
ruin around them. 

But these are no accidents. The pitiless earth- 
quake which has just overwhelmed one of our fairest 
cities, sparing neither white nor black, strong man 
nor helpless child, lay wrapped, centuries on cen- 
turies ago, in the first glowing mass out of which 
our globe was shaped, all prepared to do its de- 
vastating work this very hour. Nor is it different, 
we may be sure, with any so-called fatality whereby 
any single soul, in this disastrous summer, has been 
summoned into another life. Let not the genuine 
grief such a bereavement has brought or your utter 
sense of loss be imbittered by any needless regrets 
or self-accusings. 

An unkind summer, indeed, — beautiful, radiant, 
health-giving to the outer eye, but hiding beneath 
its fair surface what unknown and unguessed terrors! 
Yet this is not the last of all the years. As the 
turf will surely grow green again over the rents and 
scars of our Southern soil, and as nature, after her 
wont, will deck her ruins with her rarest and loveli- 
est foliage, so will these scars left on many loving 
hearts, bare now to the eye and sensitive to every 
touch, clothe themselves erelong, we may be sure, 



64 DISCOURSES 

with fresh verdure and beauty. Marvellous the 
soul's power, like nature's, to outlive its sorrows, 
and deck its own ruins with tenderer charms, — not 
by forgetting the past, not by burying its dead in 
oblivion, but by taking them to its heart of hearts, 
and being borne on with them to higher and larger 
life. 

1886. 



VI. 

PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 

" I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." — 
Matt. xv. 24. 

It is hard at first to believe that these words, 
spoken as they were by Jesus himself, mean exactly 
what they say, that he thought himself sent only to 
the Jews. It is hard for us, indeed, to understand at 
all this Jewish idea, that Jehovah's favors were for 
the house of Israel only. And yet was it so strange, 
then? Did not every race in olden time which had 
any vivid idea of divine providence at all feel sure 
that it was the special object of God's love and 
care? It may be that this was the only form in 
which the notion of a divine providence could 
possibly have shaped itself at first. It was the 
necessary first step. Even in these days, when a 
great war arises or some important political issue is 
joined, is not each nation or party quite convinced 
that its special cause is God's cause, and will 
prevail ? Whether in affairs of Church or of State, 
are we not all very confident that God is on our 
side, not the other? 

It is not altogether strange, then, that the Jews 



66 DISCOURSES 

should have considered themselves the one holy peo- 
ple, or that Jesus, in entering upon his ministry, 
should have felt himself sent, as he here declares, to 
his own people alone. Such might well be his feel- 
ing, inheriting as he did all the traditions of his 
people, until the question arose in some practical 
form. In the incident before us it so arises for the 
first time, and nothing in the entire Scriptures is 
more interesting than to watch the effect upon him 
of this new experience. For the first time in his 
life, so far as we know, he stood on heathen soil, and 
was addressed by those of another race. " Behold 
a woman of Canaan came, . . . and cried unto him, 
Have mercy upon me, O Lord : my daughter is griev- 
ously vexed with a devil." For a moment he was 
silent; and then strange enough, no doubt, to his 
own ears sounded the answer which, in obedience 
to all the traditions of the past, he at first felt com- 
pelled to make to her, "I am not sent but unto the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel." "It is not meet 
to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." 
How stern and narrow all this sounded in the pres- 
ence of such suffering and such faith ! The pathetic 
pleading of this Canaanite woman was more than he 
could bear. "Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the 
crumbs which fall from their master's table." To 
hear such an appeal was to yield to it. He found 
that he was sent to this heathen mother, so long as 
she had sorrows which he could heal. " O woman," 
he said, " great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as 
thou wilt." 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE 6/ 

His mission, then, was larger than he thought. It 
was not Jewish wounds he was to heal ; it was any 
wounds, whether of Jew or Gentile. It was not 
Jewish ears that his truth was to reach; it was any 
ears which cared or longed to hear. Christianity 
could not remain a Jewish faith, though it tried (for 
this same experience which had befallen the Master 
himself was soon to be repeated in the history of 
the little church). Limiting themselves at first 
to Jerusalem and the temple alone, the disciples 
soon found that they must address a larger audience. 
Their work was grander than they dreamed. Un- 
circumcised as well as circumcised, Greek as well 
as Jew, claimed part in the new gospel ; and their 
claims could not be refused. It cost a struggle, 
indeed, but a struggle to which there could be but 
one issue; and before the first generation had de- 
parted these words of Paul were heard, " Here is 
neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, 
neither male nor female; for ye are all one in 
Christ Jesus." 

The point I am trying to make clear by this pref- 
ace is this; that the truth is always larger than he 
who holds it, and, once uttered, enters immediately 
upon a course and mission of its own. To-day no 
less than in its earlier hours, it is well for us to 
remember, Christianity is not to be limited or de- 
fined by those who claim it as their own. It will 
define itself, and fix its own limits. It is not for 
you or me to determine who come within its bounds 
and who do not. The future will decide that ques- 



68 DISCOURSES 

tion, not the present. Christianity is not sent to 
the house of Israel only, not to Rome or England 
or America alone, nor to this church or that. It 
will go whithersoever it can, do whatsoever it 
chooses, admit to its ranks and cover with its name 
whomsoever it will, whether its present followers 
approve or not. The "Open Sesame" once spoken, 
there is no enchanter living who knows how to 
charm back the truth thus let loose upon the world. 
If you cannot trust Christianity to take its own 
course, make its own new departures, choose its own 
followers, and determine without your assistance 
who belong to it and who do not, you are no true 
Christians. 

In how many other ways than in religion does 
this same principle assert itself! Let there be 
a new discovery or invention which can benefit 
mankind, and how rapidly it finds its way from the 
study or workshop of the originator into the various 
channels of human activity and trade and the most 
distant parts of the earth! Let any great thought 
be uttered, and how soon it breaks through every 
barrier of language, and translates itself into the 
speech of every land! The poet of one country, if 
poet indeed he is, becomes in time the poet of 
every country. It is interesting to-day to note how 
literatures like the Russian, absolutely foreign in 
soil and atmosphere from ours, and once thought 
wholly alien in spirit, are now made to add their 
wealth of thought, of imagery, of moral incentive 
or social suggestion, to ours. So it is with those 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE 69 

older messages which have come to us lately in 
such popular form after many centuries from India 
and Persia. There is some question in each of 
the cases which I have in mind ("The Light of 
Asia" or " Omar Khayyam") whether we are receiv- 
ing the primitive Eastern philosophy or simply 
a nineteenth-century modernization of it; but, 
whether it be the exact original or not, it is East- 
ern truth touching the Western mind to very beau- 
tiful and often noble utterance, and putting the 
far-off past in fine spiritual communion with to-day. 
Whatever message of divine truth those literatures 
contained was sent not to Persia or India alone, but 
to all lands and all ages. It was not for one 
country, but for man. It might slumber for cen- 
turies, as it did, in undecipherable manuscripts; 
but, let the time come when man's growing avidity 
for knowledge and facilities for research call for 
it, and its hiding-place will be discovered, and 
it will be brought to light. 

And now, once having become familiar with 
this thought, let us follow it in another direction, 
where it more immediately concerns us. Let us 
see how it applies not only to the word which the 
poet or prophet speaks, but to the word which you 
or I speak, or to our very thoughts or deeds. It is 
not for us to prescribe the course or determine the 
influence of anything we do or say. When once 
given to the world, these things cease to be ours, 
or to be wholly within our control. For, good or 
bad, they belong to the world, and must take their 



JO DISCOURSES 

course and do their work there. If they are good, 
they diffuse themselves by the divine law by which 
the human heart claims whatever is holy or beauti- 
ful, from whatever source, as its own; if bad (for 
there is this side to the picture, too), by the equally 
irreversible law whereby the weak or evil mind 
catches whatever is foul or iniquitous as its own. 
It is not only the nobler sentiments from the past 
which have survived, we have to remember, but 
the ignobler as well; not the pure and elevating 
literature of Greece and Rome alone, but the un- 
clean and lascivious, too. It is not only the best 
fiction of Russia and Germany and France that is 
flooding our shores to-day, it is also the unwhole- 
some and sensational and foul. We cannot help 
it. No sage criticism can prevent it. No duties 
or custom-house regulations can bar its entrance 
to our libraries, our theatres, or our homes. The 
bold suggestion, the unlicensed thought, the sensual 
or prurient conception, finds minds enough waiting 
for it in every land; and, where it finds the waiting 
mind, there it surely goes. It makes little differ- 
ence whether the French novelist or play-writer 
of the baser sort means to corrupt American youth 
or not, whether he has them in mind, or, as is more 
likely, knows little and cares less for their exist- 
ence. He corrupts them none the less, and is the 
unconscious cause in many cases of their downfall. 
And so with every base thought or word that falls 
from our lips and every unholy deed that we com- 
mit. It finds its way, by paths that we know 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE 7 1 

little of, straight to the hearts which are awaiting 
it. Whether we mean to corrupt others by our 
vice or not, we corrupt them. Even though we 
determine that our acts are for ourselves alone, 
they are not for ourselves alone, but for whomso- 
ever they happen to reach. 

All this, as you have already discovered, is but 
another way of stating the familiar and homely fact 
of the importance of personal influence. Yes, that 
is all that I am trying to say. I am reminding you 
that every life acts in greater or less degree upon 
the other lives around it, and in ways which we 
cannot anticipate or determine. I am reminding 
you that you cannot live for yourself alone if you 
try, or if, with the best purposes in the world, you 
elect to do so. The word once spoken, the deed 
once done, is no longer yours. It belongs to the 
world's life for whatever effects it may work in 
other souls. 

If you are a parent, it is not the special word or 
act which you intend shall influence your children's 
lives which alone is felt by them or is felt by them 
most. It is perhaps the very word or act by which 
you least wish to be remembered. If you are 
simply a friend, it is not what you do for example's 
sake alone which tells upon your companions. It 
is any deed of yours, best or worst, which happens 
to find others in a sensitive mood. 

It is the more important to dwell upon this point 
because so much is to be said and so good an argu- 
ment can be entered on the opposite side. To be 



*]2 DISCOURSES 

thinking forever of the effect of our conduct upon 
others, it is often urged with some reason, makes 
us artificial and self-conscious. It robs life of its 
naturalness and delight. If we have certain facul- 
ties given us, it was of course intended that we 
should use them, and use them without over-critical 
analysis or examination of their far-off results. In 
any case, why make ourselves accountable for 
others' weakness, when we have enough of our own 
to remember? Let each secure for himself the best 
development he can without regard to others, and 
the result will be far better than if we were weigh- 
ing all possible distant contingencies with every 
act which we perform, or, in fact, thinking of them 
at all. 

If this happens to be our way of thinking, it is 
worth our while to notice two or three colossal ex- 
amples of this principle, in which we can see its 
working on a grand scale. Two such historic in- 
stances occur to us at once, — men as unlike each 
other as possible in all other respects, but who 
happened to agree entirely in this. It was Napo- 
leon's open avowal that he did not consider himself 
subject to the same moral laws as his fellows or 
bound to consider their prejudices; while with his 
great German contemporary, Goethe, though there 
is nowhere the same explicit assertion, there is 
yet the tacit assumption throughout that the 
world's ideas of right and wrong are not for him, 
neither is it for the world to pass judgment or 
criticism upon him. One is actually thrown off his 






PERSONAL INFLUENCE 73 

guard as he reads Goethe's writings, especially his 
narrative of his own life, by the absence of all ex- 
planations or apologies and the serene irrecognition 
of the world's opinion or the reader's possible esti- 
mate of any of the incidents or situations, as 
though here were a life which created its own moral 
atmosphere and established its own standards. I 
would not of course imply that Goethe was leading 
a grossly immoral life, especially as judged by the 
standard of the times, but only that he seemed to 
live without the slightest reference to others than 
himself, and as though raised above the common 
necessities of humanity. Splendid results there 
certainly were in both these two cases, potent in- 
fluences upon the generation and posterity; nor 
would either of them have cared in the least, I 
suppose, had he been told that he must accept with 
all others the workings of universal moral laws. 
None the less, however, is this true. The more 
conspicuous their position, the more had others to 
do with their deeds and thoughts. And, with all 
the glory they achieved and all the mighty intel- 
lectual influence that one, at least, is still exert- 
ing over the human mind, the world is morally 
weaker to-day for their stupendous selfishness. 

Come down now from these exalted instances to 
your own life and mine, and the case is exactly the 
same. You have the same right that Napoleon or 
Goethe had to ignore serenely the standards or 
prejudices of the world, and live for yourselves 
alone, if you can. The only trouble is that you can- 



74 DISCOURSES 

not any more than they. We will not argue whether 
it would not be better on the whole if you could, 
— better for yourselves and for the world as well. 
As well argue that it would be better, if shut up in 
a room with others, for each to breathe his own at- 
mosphere, and so not contaminate or be contam- 
inated by the air which others breathe. The air 
which one breathes all must breathe. We dwell in 
the same atmosphere, and cannot parcel it off if we 
will. So we dwell in the same moral atmosphere, 
and cannot parcel that off if we will, nor determine 
for ourselves whether we will or will not pollute 
the air which others are to inhale. Argue as you 
will about doing this or that for its own sake ex- 
clusively and not at all for example's sake, you 
cannot stamp any act with a private mark, de- 
claring it good for yourself only, and not to be 
regarded by your companions or children. Our 
relations are too intimate, our lives too closely in- 
terwoven, for any act to stand wholly by itself. It 
is perfectly true that the purpose of setting a good 
example is not the noblest motive from which one 
can act. It is quite true that to be virtuous solely 
for example's sake would be a sad piece of hypoc- 
risy, besides proving the absence of any very pos- 
itive moral convictions. You certainly are not 
called upon to appear better than you are, or to 
pretend scruples which you do not feel, or to pose 
as stern moralists in cases where you are actually 
indifferent; but, when you claim to dismiss the 
force of example wholly from your thoughts, and 



I 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE 75 

to act as though it did not exist, the case is quite 
different. To declare it non-existent does not 
make it so. It does exist whether you choose or 
not, and is one of the most significant facts of 
your daily life. To disregard it (though often 
done upon apparently high grounds, as we have 
seen) is really for the most part a piece of pure 
selfishness. We do not care to rob ourselves of an 
enjoyment which we know will not hurt us simply 
because it may hurt some one else. We forget 
that every one whom we can help has a claim upon 
our help. We forget that, if others are morally 
weaker than we, that very weakness constitutes a 
claim upon our strength. We forget that any 
happiness is dearly bought, if it can be had only by 
putting "a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall 
in our brother's way." 

I have said that the power of example, far from 
being unimportant, is one of the most significant 
facts of our daily lives. Who of us, at some period 
of our career, have not known some friend whose 
accidental word or act had more weight with us 
than any possible argument or advice from any 
quarter? How often does it happen, as we look 
back upon the past, that the strongest moral impulse 
we can remember came from some single chance 
deed, which fired our passions or stirred our ambi- 
tion or touched our generous instincts! Ask your- 
self what nobleness means, or how you know there 
is such a thing, and you will find that you have 
learned it not from books, but from lives, not from 



76 DISCOURSES 

definitions, but from seeing noble deeds. So sen- 
sitively organized are we, so imitative through a 
portion of our lives, so quickly responsive through 
all our earlier years to whatever appeals to our 
finer sentiment, as well as our baser, that the lives 
of others are affecting ours all the time. What a 
man is tells not upon himself slone, but upon his 
friends, his neighbors, his generation. 

What he is (to take the one step that remains) 
tells also upon his posterity. It is something for 
us to remember that our words or acts are no part 
of ourselves alone, but are part, for evil or good, 
for happiness or misery, of all the lives around us. 
It is far more to remember that they are part also 
of those which are to come after us. This is a fact 
which we are only beginning to realize. We have 
always known in a general way that certain types of 
countenance perpetuate themselves for generations, 
that certain gestures or tones or movements pass 
down indefinitely from father to child, that certain 
traits of character, pleasing or offensive, distinguish 
particular families as long as they exist, that cer- 
tain mental or moral habits characterize special 
localities or races or nations; but we are just be- 
ginning to understand what this means or what an 
added responsibility it lays upon us. It means that 
the type of countenance, the gesture, the habit, the 
voice, is not accidental or superficial. It is the 
inner life of years long gone by, betraying itself 
in living souls to-day. It means that our little 
acts of self-indulgence, our unclean thoughts, our 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE *]>] 

sensual gratifications, our false or tricky or ungen- 
erous habits, have a long life; that, when we have 
done with them, they have but just begun their 
career; that they are to add to the perils and multi- 
ply the struggles of many an innocent soul after we 
are gone, — many a soul longing, perhaps, for the 
good, and marvelling why these foul and villanous 
propensities force themselves so persistently upon 
its endeavors. Think of this, and yet feel, if you 
can, that our lives are wholly our own, that we are 
responsible only to ourselves, or that, if we are 
willing to reap the fruit of our own conduct, all is 
well. Think of this, and see if it does not add 
new meaning to the idea of personal responsibility, 
and give fresh incentive to your efforts for self- 
control. 

Such, at least, is the thought which I would leave 
with you to-day. Possibly you find no need of 
other incentive to good action than the love of 
virtue or the hatred of wrong; but, if these motives 
ever fail, it may well help you in your struggles to 
remember the many lives which one single deed 
may reach and the far-off influences to which it is 
sure to lead. 

1889. 



VII. 
MEMORIALS OF JESUS. 

"These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God." — John xx. 31. 

From one point of view it seems a singular fate 
which has befallen the greatest of earthly lives, — 
that its memory should have been preserved by 
such scanty records. Lives infinitely less impor- 
tant to the world, some of them such as mankind 
would have been glad to have forgotten entirely, 
come down to us from the same period, or earlier, 
in the utmost fulness of detail, so that we know how 
the men themselves looked and spoke and dressed. 
The emperors, statesmen, generals, poets, traitors, 
of the time we can reproduce to the imagination 
to-day almost as they walked the streets of Rome 
or Athens. But this great religious Teacher, 
every feature of whose living personality would be 
infinitely precious to us, stands among his contem- 
poraries a dim and shadowy form. There is not 
one of us here who has not tried at times to give 
some vividness or lifelikeness to his conception of 
Jesus of Nazareth, only to give up the effort in the 
end as well-nigh impracticable. The records of his 
life, interesting and precious as they are, do not 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 79 

supply the material which we need. We cannot be 
wholly surprised at this. That an obscure peasant 
of Galilee (as he appeared at first) should not have 
the incidents of his childhood and youth as fully 
noted and preserved as an emperor or orator of 
Rome, whose importance was recognized during 
his life or from his birth, needs no explanation, of 
course. What seems strange and hard to us is 
that, even after his death, when the real signifi- 
cance of his career began to be seen and the name 
of Jesus of Nazareth was upon every lip, still no 
attempt was made for so many years to preserve 
the fast disappearing memories of his personal his- 
tory. Yet why should they be preserved, as things 
then looked? Why perpetuate the paltry human 
experiences of one who was so soon to appear as 
the great lord and ruler of the whole earth? Nay, 
why reproduce the past at all, or any of its records, 
however momentous, so long as all existing empires 
were to perish with the coming of the new kingdom 
of the Messiah, and the heavens and earth them- 
selves to pass away and give place to the new 
heavens and the new earth? Such was the expec- 
tation which filled all minds for a generation after 
the Master's death, and such its unfortunate and 
irrevocable results. Bewildered and paralyzed by 
this splendid dream of the future, they let the pre- 
cious hours and moments slip by; one after an- 
other of those who had seen Jesus in the flesh passed 
from the scene, leaving no written memorials be- 
hind; scoffers arose, saying, "Where is the prom- 



8o DISCOURSES 

ise of his coming? for, since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the creation,"; until, at last, when a 
younger generation appeared, clamoring for some 
knowledge of their great Leader, the golden oppor- 
tunity had passed forever, and only such vague and 
scattered reminiscences as could be gathered at sec- 
ond hand from those who had heard their fathers 
or grandfathers narrate them remained to tell the 
story of those sacred years in Galilee. 

But it is not worth our while to deplore these 
facts, nor is it at all for that purpose that I allude 
to them now. On the contrary, recognizing at the 
outset the necessary inadequacy of the gospel rec- 
ords (which, under the circumstances, could hardly 
have been more complete than they are), I wish to 
point out certain features of peculiar value which 
we are a little likely to forget. 

Take any historical character. Once grant that 
there are no adequate biographies of him, and the 
next best thing, I think we should all agree, would 
be to catch from as many points of view as possible 
the impression which he made upon his contempo- 
raries. Among the meagre memorials of Jesus it 
is an indescribable advantage to us that we have 
these personal impressions coming to us from sev- 
eral different sources, — impressions, it must be 
confessed, not so much of his personality as of his 
work, yet none the less of very definite and positive 
value. Let us consider the more important of 
these this morning. 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 8 1 

First, of course, we have the Gospels them- 
selves, or, rather, the first three Gospels, which 
give us whatever remains of the bare incidents of 
his career. Without discussing for the present 
the difference between these Gospels and the 
Fourth, it is enough to say that the writings of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke have in marked degree 
the character of simple chronicles of the ministry 
of Jesus, with no comments and but slight personal 
coloring on the part of the writers themselves. In 
this simplicity and impersonality lies their pecul- 
iar value. To be sure, there are little indications 
showing that one evangelist is more familiar with 
the Hebrew Scriptures than the others, or is a 
little more strictly Jewish in his feelings, or 
handles his materials with more or less literary 
skill; but this serves only to give greater piq- 
uancy to the narratives without affecting their sim- 
plicity. Nowhere does the writer force himself 
upon the reader's notice, or betray his own feeling 
or opinion. Nowhere are we aware of his pres- 
ence, or called upon by him to wonder or admire, 
or prevented in any way from forming our own im- 
pressions from the events or words. Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke are mere names to us. They are 
the accidental compilers of facts which they have 
been fortunate enough to have saved from oblivion, 
and which they leave us to judge for ourselves. 
They do not even attempt to fill up, by their im- 
agination, the strange gaps in their narrative, 
which they must have deplored as much as we, — 



82 DISCOURSES 

the whole period of Jesus' childhood, the incidents 
of his home life, or his relations with parents or 
brothers or sisters, his education, or the beginnings 
of those solemn thoughts or high resolves which 
bore him forward finally to his ministry and death. 
They do not attempt to purge their narratives of 
inconsistencies or contradictions, or place in fairer 
light the misconceptions or want of appreciation of 
the disciples, or to conceal the struggles, the temp- 
tations, or the mental agonies of Jesus himself. 
All is honest, unaffected, and impartial. These 
Gospels give us, so far as they go, as clear a picture 
as we could ask of the Christianity of Christ him- 
self, the Christianity of the earliest hours, before 
it had undergone any of the modifications or trans- 
formations which began so soon to pervert its 
primitive simplicity. Indeed, so perfect is this 
truthfulness, so completely do these narratives be- 
long to the age in which they were written, that 
the modern reader, breathing as he does the atmos- 
phere of modern times, is apt to lose their real 
significance. He interprets their language through 
his own inbred convictions and beliefs. He un- 
derstands the kingdom of God or the coming of the 
Son of Man, he understands heaven and hell, res- 
urrection and the grave, the present and the future, 
as those words would mean if spoken to-day instead 
of eighteen centuries ago. In a word, even those 
who have loudest praise for the historical veracity 
of the Gospels rarely credit them with being the 
perfect mirror of the ideas, the habits, the expecta- 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 83 

tions, the beliefs of the times which they really are. 
It would be the best possible practice in the art of 
historical research or the cultivation of the true 
historical sense to try to read the pages of Matthew, 
Mark, or Luke just as Matthew, Mark, or Luke 
meant that they should be read, and without forcing 
into their language at any point the religious con- 
ceptions of to-day. It is safe to say that not one 
reader of the Bible out of a hundred even attempts 
this thing, while not one out of a thousand succeeds 
in the attempt. These Gospels carry a precious 
message; but it is a message whose artlessness, 
whose sincerity, whose rare and beautiful fidelity, 
few of us have even begun to appreciate. Let me 
recommend to you all, if you would get for your- 
selves a fresh interest in the Christian Scriptures 
and come to a new understanding of them, to 
undertake this task. 

But the first three Gospels do not give us our 
whole knowledge of Jesus. There are other books 
in the New Testament besides, very different in 
character from these, and which many, on this ac- 
count, are inclined to disparage. To get the primi- 
tive gospel, many say, we must go to Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke. They, and they alone, give the 
very words of Jesus and his very acts; they alone 
therefore are of any real value in interpreting 
Christianity. Why not content ourselves with the 
Gospels alone? It cannot be denied that there 
is much reason for this attitude. It is a natural 
enough reaction from the indiscriminate sanctity 



84 DISCOURSES 

once ascribed to all the Scripture books alike or to 
the thoroughly unhistorical habit among theologians 
of every age to make Jesus responsible for the theo- 
logical doctrines of Paul and others who followed 
him. The fact that whatever dogmas are to be 
found in the Xew Testament are in the Epistles, 
not in the Gospels, cannot be too strongly em- 
phasized. At the same time the fact that the 
Epistles are not the Gospels does not prove that 
they have no historical value. Because Paul is not 
Jesus, it does not follow that he cannot help us in 
understanding primitive Christianity. On the con- 
trary, he has a place and function of his own, none 
the less important for being wholly peculiar. It 
is to the testimony of Paul that we look next. 

I have spoken of the great value of the first 
Gospels as simple chronicles of events, with no pur- 
pose on the writer's part beyond the mere statement 
of the facts. Such chronicles are always invaluable. 
They form the basis of all trustworthy history. 
Fortunate the historian who can put his hand upon 
contemporary documents of the times he would de- 
scribe. The more childish they are, the more un- 
learned, the less deliberation or thought they show, 
or purpose of any kind beyond the mere telling of 
the story, the more valuable, in a certain sense, 
they become. At the same time these simple 
chronicles are not the only valuable form of 
history. More thoughtful or elaborate documents 
are also valuable. Besides, the mere eye-witness 
of events, who describes them to his children or 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 85 

friends, telling his story with more or less vivacity 
and accuracy and dramatic power, are often a few 
intelligent observers, who are interested not only 
in the events themselves, but also in their character 
or meaning. They look behind the deed or word 
to the motive or purpose which it shows. They 
detect at once its moral or spiritual importance, 
and see something of the consequences to which it 
is likely to lead. They have previous notions or 
opinions of their own which these events agree 
with or oppose. The more of such observing or 
analyzing power they have, or the stronger their 
preconceived ideas, the less value will their re- 
ports have, of course, as pure chronicles (in which 
we wish to see nothing of the reporter himself), 
but the more value will they have as analyses or 
interpretations of the events. There is a differ- 
ence which we all recognize between mere chroni- 
cles and what may be called philosophical history. 
Both of them are valuable. If we want to know 
our own early colonial history, we are interested in 
reading the actual diaries or letters of Bradford or 
Winthrop, and feel that nothing tells the story 
more perfectly than these; but, unless we have a 
peculiar historical faculty ourselves, we shall be 
glad to have some Palfrey or Bancroft study these 
materials carefully for us, arrange them, bring the 
events into proper relations with each other, and 
point out to us their historical significance. 

Paul can hardly be called a philosophical his- 
torian, as he did not claim to be a historian at all; 



86 DISCOURSES 

but he gives us the events of the times in what 
seems to him their moral and religious significance. 
Some of his writings, of course, count among origi- 
nal Christian documents of highest genuineness 
and value. His letters are indeed the earliest 
documents that we have, much earlier than the Gos- 
pels, and give us invaluable pictures of the thoughts 
and manners of the apostolic age; but, in general, 
it is to be said of Paul that he shows us early 
Christianity as it looked to the Jewish theologian. 
He was the first of the followers of Jesus to bring 
with him any theological knowledge or systematic 
habits of thought. To him the whole history of 
Jewish religion and all the rabbinical speculations 
upon it were thoroughly familiar. On being con- 
verted to Christianity, he saw at once what others 
had not discovered, the broader bearing of the new 
thought. He found in Jesus a fulfilment of his own 
most lofty dreams and the carrying out of all that 
was sublimest in the visions and hopes of the Jew- 
ish faith. 

It was not the personal Jesus, as he walked 
among the villages of Galilee, and as the three 
evangelists depicted him, that he cared for; it was 
the crucified and risen Christ. In Paul's writ- 
ings is hardly a single allusion to the incidents 
of Jesus' life, the eloquence of his words, or the 
divine beauty of his character; but the pages are 
full of the glory of the Christ. In the writings of 
Paul we see Jesus not in his human dignity, but in 
his celestial majesty, not as he looked to the fisher- 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 8? 

men or tax-gatherers of Galilee, but as he looked to 
one bred in the scholastic atmosphere of Jerusalem, 
and alive to the historical significance of the truth 
which Jesus taught. The wider import of that 
truth, the freedom from the Mosaic yoke which it 
portended, the something more than Judaism which 
breathed through it, — all this which had been lost 
upon the Galilean disciples found quick response 
in Paul's humaner sympathies. That he gave to 
Jesus' simple teaching a strangely dogmatic form 
cannot be denied, yet even in that system we see as 
nowhere else a recognition on Paul's part of the 
mighty moral impulse which Jesus had introduced 
into the world. That he exalted Jesus of Nazareth 
(who to the immediate disciples was a purely human 
leader) into a very mystic and incomprehensible re- 
lation with Deity must also be confessed; yet in 
that very exaltation in which Christ appears as the 
"image of God," "the first-born of every creature," 
"one in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily," purely ideal as it seems to us, we yet 
catch glimpses of the spiritual majesty of Jesus as 
it revealed itself to this great apostle. 

But there are still other books in the New Testa- 
ment besides the Epistles of Paul and other points 
of view than his. In Paul's writings we find, as 
we have seen, a deep theological or intellectual ap- 
prehension of Jesus' work, which is quite foreign 
to the first three Gospels, yet without which our 
knowledge of Jesus would be inadequate. But 
different from the purely intellectual apprehension 



88 DISCOURSES 

of a character, and often far deeper, is what may be 
called the poetic apprehension, the imaginative in- 
sight which penetrates to all the finer and subtler 
qualities of heart and soul. Poetry and religion 
go always hand in hand: to know a religious nature 
thoroughly, we must be able to see it somewhat as 
it reveals itself to poetic sympathies. Fortunately 
this element is not wholly lacking either in the 
New Testament. Though there is, properly speak- 
ing, no poetic treatise in the New Testament like 
the Psalms or Prophets of the Old, yet in the 
Fourth Gospel (known to us as the Gospel of John), 
we find a delineation of the Christ which could 
come only from a profoundly imaginative mind. 
Many think that to call a Scripture writing imagi- 
native is equivalent to calling it fictitious or decep- 
tive. Yet the imagination is a legitimate faculty, 
and as much in place in sacred matters as in secu- 
lar. For the true interpretation of a nature like 
that of Jesus some imaginative insight is absolutely 
needed. We may well be grateful, therefore, that 
this is supplied us so amply and so frankly in the 
Fourth Gospel. Here is a writer who cannot be 
content to follow the literal and prosaic incidents 
of Christ's career; he must unfold at every point 
their spiritual and ideal import. Indeed, the in- 
cidents themselves are of secondary importance to 
him. He uses or omits at will. No signs of 
human weakness or struggle, no inward conflicts or 
agonies, no forty days' temptation at the opening 
ministry, and no Garden of Gethsemane with its 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 89 

prayers and tears at its close, are to be found in 
the Fourth Gospel. From beginning to end, ac- 
cording to this Gospel, Jesus walks through his 
earthly paths, not as a man among men, but as a 
being of another sphere. All splendor of lan- 
guage, all the more imaginative conceptions of con- 
temporary religious philosophy, are called into 
service to portray the grandeur of this Son of God, 
who becomes on these pages the "Word made 
flesh," the "Light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." Not that the actual facts 
of that Galilean life were wilfully ignored or dis- 
torted or its truths falsified, but they were all 
idealized; beautifully idealized, poetically ideal- 
ized, so idealized as to disclose to us many hidden 
spiritual realities, but still placing before the 
reader an ideal Jesus in place of the real. Were 
this the only account of Jesus that the Christian 
world possessed, it would be anything but a faithful 
representation of the actual life; but, taken as it 
stands, in connection with the more literal records 
in the other Gospels, it brings a spiritual beauty 
and truth to light which we could ill afford to lose. 
In a certain university town with which you are 
all familiar, before one of its noblest halls, stands 
a charming bronze statue bearing upon its base the 
name of the founder of the college. The fine and 
delicate figure and the scholarly, intellectual feat- 
ures seem an altogether worthy representation of 
the man whose generous gift, two centuries and a 
half ago, gave birth to so princely an institution of 



90 DISCOURSES 

learning. It is not the actual John Harvard, but 
it is a beautiful and fitting nineteenth-century con- 
ception of him. Suppose now that five hundred 
years more have passed, and let us ask what value 
this statue of John Harvard, in case it survives the 
storms and frosts of five hundred winters, will then 
have for the student or visitor at Harvard Univer- 
sity. I can imagine him, when the whole story is 
told, treating the statue with infinite scorn, as a 
deliberate imposture and fraud, and as substituting 
for the actual founder of the college the sculptor's 
visionary notion of him. But I can imagine him 
also saying, Though this is not John Harvard him- 
self, and does not claim to be, yet it is the artistic 
ideal of him as it presented itself to a sympathetic 
soul five centuries nearer to the man himself than 
we to-day, and it helps us just so much to realize 
the loftiness and beauty of his life. 

Such, as it seems to me, is the relation in which 
the Fourth Gospel, though somewhat nearer to the 
original life which it portrays, and drawing from 
much larger materials than in the case of the statue, 
stands to the actual Jesus. It shows us not the 
man himself, but an ideal conception of him; yet 
an ideal created by one so much closer to Jesus 
than we are, and qualified by his spiritual gifts to 
penetrate so deeply into the life he was studying, 
that we are all infinitely the gainers by it. 

In fine, to bring this discourse to a close, the 
character of Jesus was not one to be comprehended 
at a glance: it was manifold and complex. Not 



MEMORIALS OF JESUS 91 

the mere chronicler alone, though he reported never 
so exactly the facts which he observed, not the 
theologian alone, though he comprehended abso- 
lutely the religious significance of Jesus' words, 
not the poet alone, or the philosopher, though he 
saw marvels of beauty in that life hidden from 
every other eye, can portray for us the actual Jesus. 
We need them all, — the chronicler, the theologian, 
the poet. Only when they have all given us their 
report, only when the outer man as he lived and 
spoke is sketched by the one, and the inner man as 
he felt and thought by the other, does the real 
Jesus of Christian history stand fully revealed. 



VIII. 
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY. 

" If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall 
ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" — John iii. 12. 

Let me repeat this text ; for I am sure that, if 
I can convey to you the meaning it has to me, you 
will find it of the greatest help in your religious 
thought. " If I have told you earthly things, and 
ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you 
of heavenly things " ? In other words, our belief 
in heavenly things must follow, not precede, our 
belief in earthly things. First earthly thought, 
knowledge, faith, then heavenly. From the lower 
we must proceed to the higher, from the known to 
the unknown. Let me try to show you, in as 
simple words as I can, the conclusions to which, 
as it seems to me, this thought leads us. 

First, it corrects certain misapprehensions which 
are wont to make religious ideas unnecessarily ob- 
scure and difficult to us. We are apt to think that, 
because religious truths are so all-important and 
sacred, therefore there must be some peculiar occult 
method by which we can reach a knowledge of 
them. As spiritual beings, we argue, we must 
necessarily have some direct, innate perception of 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 93 

spiritual realities. Earthly affairs are one thing, 
according to this idea, heavenly things quite an- 
other. The laws of nature can be learned by 
habits of observation, mathematical formulas by in- 
tellectual processes; but the being of God and the 
moral law have nothing to do with the senses, or 
even the intellect, but, if they are discerned at 
all, must be spiritually and intuitively discerned. 
Hence, on the one hand, the arrogance of those who 
claim an absolute knowledge of heavenly affairs; 
on the other, the pains and struggles of pious souls 
yearning for a clearer knowledge of God, and re- 
proaching themselves or their teachers because 
they cannot attain it. To all such needless mis- 
conceptions these words come as a grateful correc- 
tive. "First the earthly, then the heavenly." 
Learn the truths that are close about you, if you 
would know those that are far away. Heavenly 
things constitute no distinct sphere apart from all 
else, to be entered only through special insight or 
by processes peculiar to themselves; they are re- 
lated to earthly truths, and are to be approached 
by the same paths. Knowledge of God may be in- 
finitely higher than knowledge of man ; but it is to 
be won, if at all, in the same way. There is no 
other. Being men, we must know humanly. Liv- 
ing on the earth, earthly realities must first fill our 
souls; and through them alone can we attain to 
higher realities. Be content with this, for needs 
you must. The other world, when at last you enter 
it, will still be this world; the future, when once 



94 DISCOURSES 

you have reached it, will be the present. And, 
when that time comes, if you have not believed in 
earthly realities, how can you believe in the higher 
and diviner heavenly realities? If you ever expect 
to get any positive religious convictions or to ad- 
vance to greater faith, be content to begin here 
with the earth in which you live. If you hope to 
grasp any abstract truths (religious or other), you 
must begin with the concrete. If you wish for 
ideas, you must begin with facts. Learn to com- 
prehend and appreciate the relations amid which 
you live, the duties, affections, and problems of 
daily life, and you will find yourselves, by that 
very process, coming into the knowledge of the 
divine. 

And this suggests the second help which our text 
renders us. It rescues the term " earthly " from 
the discredit which is so apt to attach to it. It 
places earthly and heavenly things side by side, as 
sharers in the same dignity, or, at least, steps 
toward the same end. It is strange how long old 
errors, even when superannuated, still cling to our 
modern thought. The ancient notion of the corrup- 
tion of the flesh taints our religious ideas, however 
unconsciously, to-day. Old theologians declared 
every impulse and motion of the senses to be evil, 
and only evil continually. Old philosophers re- 
garded the Supreme Deity as too exalted to have 
had any share himself in creating the world, and 
conceived of an attendant spirit, or Logos, who 
took upon himself that debasing work. The human 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 95 

mind to-day echoes these primeval ideas. It cannot 
bear to have earthly and heavenly things conjoined. 
It shudders to hear matter and spirit mentioned in 
the same breath. It resents the idea that the mind 
or soul can in any sense be dependent upon the 
body in which for the hour it condescends to dwell. 
It decries the notion that the imperial faculties 
which ennoble man can have any essential connec- 
tion with the instincts or passions of the brute 
animals at our side. It repels as an outrage the 
suggestion that the terror of savage tribes, centuries 
ago, at the earthquake or the eclipse, or the adjust- 
ment of the savage or the animal to his surround- 
ings, can stand in the remotest relation with the 
august instincts of religion or the supreme sancti- 
ties of conscience. Our text shows us the folly of 
such an attitude. There can be no true progress, 
as it reminds us, till all these unworthy distinctions 
are swept away, till we confess that whatever God 
creates, whether body or spirit, matter or mind, is 
holy, till we feel that, if God is indeed everywhere, 
he is in the dust of the earth or the lowest forms of 
sentient life, as well as in the loftiest thoughts or 
impulses of man, and that it is no derogation to 
what is most spiritual to ally it closely with what 
is most material. If you would see the dignity of 
the heavenly, you must begin by discerning the 
dignity of the earthly. 

Again, our text reminds us that we can live in 
but one world at once. Whatever other heavenly 
spheres there may be, and however sublime the life 



g6 DISCOURSES 

or duties of those spheres, we are for the present 
here, not there, and belong to the world in which 
we are placed. For the time we belong to it abso- 
lutely. To attempt a twofold allegiance is to be 
disloyal to that which God has assigned us. To 
attempt to lead two lives in one is to lead neither 
faithfully or well. To dwell upon earth as if we 
were here only upon sufferance, and as though our 
duties all the time lay elsewhere, is to spoil a good 
earthly life, to make a poor heavenly one. Far 
better to attempt that which there is some possi- 
bility of our doing well. Far better to take this 
life seriously, and honor it with our best endeavors. 
The best we can do is not too good for it. The 
utmost endeavor we can consecrate to it will not 
more than fulfil its actual duties. The utmost 
thought, conscience, wisdom, we can bring to its 
service will not exhaust nor completely fathom its 
moral significance. Be of the world, in highest 
sense, while in it, and you will find mind, heart, 
soul, taxed to their fullest power, and still much 
left unseen and unknown and undone. O child of 
earth, why fight against your fate? Why renounce 
your parentage? Why bear your head aloft as 
though the dust out of which you were born were 
too base for you to tread upon, or the life into 
which you are summoned too mean and scanty for 
your lofty faculties to consecrate themselves to? 
Why scorn the ties which bind you, and wait for 
some far-off realms and far-away future to engage 
your reverence, your love, or your faith ? 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 97 

It often seems to me passing strange that we 
should work ourselves into such impatience over 
limitations of our knowledge, which mean simply 
that we are living here, not elsewhere, that we 
belong not to another world, but to this. Why 
should we be ashamed or angered at this admis- 
sion? Why expect to be inhabitants of one world 
and have perfect knowledge of another? Why com- 
plain that we do not see that world? It only means 
that we do see or can see this. Why strain your 
eyes to catch visions in the clouds when there are 
abundant forms and figures within their sight, but 
not yet fully discerned on the earth? 

Does this mean then, you ask, that there is no 
knowledge of heavenly things for us while on earth? 
that eternal and absolute truths are to us as though 
they did not exist? that God, heaven, immortality, 
are to be treated as phantoms or as mere possibili- 
ties, while earthly things are alone to be considered 
real? It means, I reply, that we are to accept 
such knowledge of heavenly realities as is vouch- 
safed to us or is possible to us, and not ask for 
more. It means, as I understand the matter, that 
we need expect to know nothing of these heavenly 
things except as they are related to ourselves. Our 
knowledge of them is not absolute, but relative. 
Just so far as God has dealings with man, just so 
far and no farther can we get for ourselves any 
knowledge of him or his ways. All beyond is 
pure conjecture. What comes within the ken of 
our mortal vision, what enters within the compass 



98 DISCOURSES 

of our earthly experiences or the experience of 
those before us, is ours to know, and that alone. 
Absolute knowledge is the pretence of priests, the 
haughty claim of a hierarchy, the chimera of fa- 
natics. Heavenly realities reveal themselves to us 
only by virtue of translating themselves into terms 
of human experience. It is through the medium 
of the earthly that we discern the heavenly. 

But what is the earthly? is our next question. 
Where does the line run that separates the earthly 
from the heavenly? Between visible and invisible 
things, does it not thus limit us to tangible reali- 
ties. By no means. These affections which bind 
us to each other, these pangs of grief, these throbs 
of expectation, these memories of the past and 
hopes of the future, are as genuine a part of our 
earthly lives as our bodily appetites, as the food 
which we eat or the money we earn. Love, hatred, 
revenge, ambition, envy, generosity, duty, loyalty, 
trust, are as substantial earthly verities as the air 
we breathe or the ground on which we walk. Who 
will deny it? Was man an earthly being forty 
centuries ago, when he simply ate and fought and 
slept and lived in caves, and no longer earthly now, 
when he flies to the stars in his search for truth, 
when he covers every land with hospitals and 
churches, and writes the centuries over with noble 
and consecrated deeds? Has he ceased now to be 
man and become a god? Has he not, on the con- 
trary, found room for all these grandeurs, and a 
thousand others besides, within the bounds of a 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 



99 



purely earthly life? Away, then, with your notion 
that the sensual only is earthly, and the spiritual 
heavenly! Away with your imputation that man 
is any less man for becoming, as compared with 
his former self, a very angel of beneficence and 
of wisdom ! He is not less man, but more. This 
splendor of heroism is his higher manhood. This 
ardor of self-consecration, this passion for useful- 
ness, this enthusiasm of humanity, is his deeper 
and more perfect self. It is not man becoming 
God: it is man becoming man. The better he 
grows, the sublimer his aspirations, the purer his 
thoughts, the cleaner his life, the more spiritual 
his motives and acts, the more truly is he man. 
The more our bodies, our muscles, our sinews, our 
arms and eyes and feet, lend themselves to deeds 
of prowess or errands of mercy or lives of self- 
sacrifice, the more perfectly do they achieve the 
purposes of their creation. These are the earthly 
things which open to us the heavenly. If ye be- 
lieve not the one, how will ye believe the other? 

But what is the difference then, you will ask 
next, between this view of divine truth and any 
other? If the earthly life of which you speak so 
much, and to which you would bind us, is a 
spiritual life, how does it differ, after all, from 
the heavenly life to which religion ordinarily 
points us? 

It is a difference, primarily, of method, of the 
way of approaching the truth. It is a question of 
beginning at the right end. The ordinary method 



100 DISCOURSES 

is like first studying the heavens and forming our 
conclusions about them by the eyes, and then forti- 
fying our opinions with the telescope: like forming 
a priori conceptions of the vegetable world by the 
way it looks or the way we think it ought to be, 
and then proceeding to examine flowers with the 
microscope. It is like any other method of thought 
which places theory before fact. The great trouble 
in our religious thinking, as we have already seen, 
is that we are so impatient with the position in 
which we are placed. We are not content to regard 
ourselves creatures of the earth, looking at things 
from an earthly standpoint. We are like the old 
churchmen, who insisted that Galileo could teach 
them nothing about the heavens. They knew all 
about that already, and would not listen to the 
purely earthly facts which Galileo's telescope dis- 
closed. Galileo, on the other hand, clung to his 
facts. Very petty and belittling facts they seemed, 
it must be confessed, relegating the earth to a most 
subordinate place in the universe: but, after all, 
which way has taught us most of heaven? Galileo 
preferred to look from the earth upward, the 
ecclesiastics to look from the heavens downward. 
Unfortunately, as they happened to stand upon the 
earth instead of the skies, the ecclesiastical vision, 
with all its splendor, proved but a brilliant delu- 
sion, which, had it been persisted in, would have 
brought the astronomical calculations of all suc- 
ceeding centuries into confusion. Galileo was 
right. The earth did move, though all the a priori 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 101 

conceptions of all the ages were against it. He 
planted his telescope upon the earth, and so his 
eyes were able to scan the heavens. We, too, 
stand upon the earth. Unfortunate though it be, 
we are certainly here, and from here we must 
start. We must climb our ladder from the bottom, 
not the top. We must hold fast to our solid facts, 
and not despise them. We must prefer our facts 
to all the dreams of cloudland. We must honor 
facts, — honor them with that reverence which 
belongs to everything which comes from God, 
with that searching examination into their mean- 
ing which befits those things which carry in them 
nature's mighty secrets. Then we shall find that 
the little facts of our daily existence are of im- 
mense significance and marvellous grandeur. They 
will carry us as deep as we choose to explore and 
lift us as high as we care to soar. They will give 
employment to all our moral and spiritual facul- 
ties, to all the yearnings and aspirations, the hopes 
and trusts, of our souls. 

Another difference between this method and 
those usually followed is that it rids us of all 
pretences of false knowledge, with their baneful 
effects. Those who hold up to their fellows splen- 
did visions of heavenly truth or enchant them with 
beautiful social ideals, drawn wholly from their 
inner consciousness, but announced with all the cer- 
tainty of absolute knowledge, seldom remember the 
sad day of reckoning which they are preparing for 
their victims. They think only of the great hopes 



102 DISCOURSES 

they are inspiring and the momentary comfort they 
are imparting, not of the false expectations they are 
awakening, only to be shattered or mocked. Place 
before the suffering classes, in the tenderness of 
your compassion for them, ravishing pictures of an 
ideal social order, declaim vaguely against the 
heartlessness and cupidity of our existing arrange- 
ments, and set over against them the vision of an 
absolute justice, drawn, not from the world as it is, 
but from the world as you think it should be, and 
the hour must inevitably come when the unreality 
of this dreamland and the bitter reality of the world 
as it is will goad them to a more utter despair or 
a more furious and relentless protest against the 
world than ever. Place before the worshipper or 
the mourner or the seeker after spiritual verities 
sublime assurances of heavenly comfort, positive 
assertions of the joys which await them in another 
world, unfaltering prophecies of God's special 
providence over them, declare authoritatively that 
what you think ought to be must be, and what you 
believe God should do he will do, and you have 
filled to-day with peace and resignation. But how 
will it be to-morrow, when life's sorrows prove real 
and your prophecies prove unreal, when the earth 
is very near, and the heavens which you have 
sketched prove but the fabric of your pious imagina- 
tion, when the world, with its grinding necessities 
or its persistent doubts and questionings, is in- 
tensely present, and your splendid theories but a 
shallow dream? Your path is wrong. You must 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 103 

seek your ideal in the real. You must seek your 
reign of absolute justice and right, not by proving 
the world's worthlessness, but by recognizing its 
worth, not in the injustice of the present order, 
but in its justice, not in the selfishness and de- 
pravity of the average man, but in his essential 
generosity. 

You who inveigh with all your soul against the 
injustice of the present social order, how do you 
know that it is unjust? How do you know that 
this hot pursuit of wealth, this enrichment of the 
few and impoverishment of the many, this heartless 
greed of the strong and pitiful crushing out or 
trampling under foot of the weak (granting it all), 
how do you know that it is not according to the 
eternal order of justice and right? Only because 
in your breast and a hundred breasts at your side, 
inherited from a far-off ancestry, and growing ever 
stronger in the human heart since civilization 
began, is this ineradicable sentiment of justice. 
Your very invective against the injustice of society 
testifies to the existence of what you deny. When 
you declare these abuses of wealth and power un- 
just, you know that the world is on your side. 
That gives your charge its weight. It is the world 
pronouncing them unjust, not you, — the world 
which you despise, and teach others to despise and 
mistrust. Teach them, rather, to trust it. Show 
them that injustice and wrong are the surface feat- 
ures of society, justice and generosity and right its 
essential qualities, else society would not be. 



104 DISCOURSES 

Show them that this fact, as it is the sole explana- 
tion of the past, is also the only hope of the future. 
Show them that, if injustice really reigns to-day 
and society is radically wrong, then their beauteous 
pictures of social regeneration must remain forever 
in the clouds. Show them that nothing comes of 
nothing; that man's regeneration must spring not 
out of what is not, but out of what is: not out of 
the absence of justice and love, but out of their 
presence. Show them that we can promise a better 
future, not because the present is irreparably bad, 
but precisely because in the present lie germs of 
tenderness and brotherly feeling and sympathy, out 
of which the future is to be born. If they will not 
believe these earthly things, if they will not be- 
lieve in man's essential unselfishness and love, how 
will they believe in your ideal reign of right, where 
man must needs be the actor still? It is our faith 
in the present which gives us our faith in the 
future, it is the earthly trust which leads us to the 
heavenly, it is human goodness and purity out of 
which we form our conception of the divine. It is 
this earthly life of ours in which all these great 
sanctities lie. 

But where, then, if this earthly life, not the 
heavenly, is the supreme reality for us, is the realm 
of religious faith? Faith? What is faith, if not 
this very recognition of invisible realities, whether 
present or distant? Faith has no need to travel to 
far-off realms for its objects, so long as it finds such 
abundant occupation here, to discover beneath the 



EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY 105 

surface of humanity man's hidden and finer nature, 
to discern beneath the bluster and self-seeking, 
which seem to be carrying everything before them, 
the silent processes of justice and right which are 
the real forces of society yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. Faith is the recognition of these silent 
forces wherever and whenever they are. 

Or, again, what room is there for God, it may 
be asked, if our thoughts are to centre in the pres- 
ent life? God? Where is God, if not in the midst 
of our present life? If God is anywhere, he is 
here; if in any world, he is in this. Wherever you 
see goodness or holiness, there you come upon his 
tracks. Where better can you learn to recognize 
him than close at hand? If you see him not here, 
how can you see him in regions far away? If 
earthly things reveal him not, how will heavenly? 

First the earthly, then the heavenly. Such is 
the divine path. God does not ask both at once. 
Our present life is earthly: he asks of us only to 
make of it all that an earthly life can be, and to 
draw from it all the truths that an earthly life can 
reveal. But he does ask that. He asks us to do 
all this life's duties, to find out all its sanctities, 
to see in it all that is purest and best. He asks us 
to believe in it, that so we may believe in all that 
is holiest and divinest. 

1890. 



IX. 

AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN 
SOLDIERS. 

A SERMON FOR MEMORIAL SUNDAY. 

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
life for his friends." — John xv. 13. 

The memorial services which we have just been 
witnessing have a peculiar beauty of their own. 
They are in many respects the most interesting of 
our anniversaries. They bring back to us the hours 
of the country's peril and of its new birth. They 
commemorate deeds of bravery and devotion which 
it is our joy and pride to recall. They break in 
upon our busy and calculating lives with inspiring 
memories of heroism and self-sacrifice. Long may 
the day keep its dignity and its charm ! 

But it will not, unless we guard it jealously. 
Even such hours, we must remember, may lose 
their sanctity, and the glowing eulogies we utter 
become an empty and hollow mockery. Let me 
confess at once that this danger seems to me very 
near. Let me confess that I feel a certain sense of 
depression even now, when I witness or take part 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZ2N SOLDIERS 107 

in these observances, and that the honors which we 
thus pay to our departed heroes seem to me to 
contrast most painfully with the lack of honor 
paid them during the remainder of the year. 

Let me explain; for the subject, unwelcome as it 
is, deserves the serious attention of all those who 
think our late war was worth the fighting or the 
cause for which we battled worth the sacrifice of 
such costly blood. My younger hearers will hardly 
know at first what I mean, and my older listeners 
may regret to have their tender memories disturbed 
by such unusual criticism; but, if there ever was 
a time when a word of frank remonstrance was de- 
manded, it is now. If we do not wish the ideals to 
which we have clung so long to be rudely shattered 
and the conflict of a quarter of a century ago to be 
robbed of its grandeur and made to appear like an 
unseemly scramble for spoils, it behooves us to 
pause in our present career. 

When the war was over, the soldier naturally 
became the object of the nation's gratitude. No 
kindness, no distinction, no generosity, was too 
great to bestow upon him. No care was too tender, 
no provision too lavish, for those whom the war 
left maimed or disabled or for the widows or or- 
phans who were cast destitute upon the world. 
The nation adopted them all as her children. 
Hospitals arose, soldiers' homes sprang up, aid 
societies appeared on every hand, pension laws were 
eagerly enacted to cover every case of suffering or 
need. With characteristic munificence, we may 



108 DISCOURSES 

even say with characteristic prodigality, provisions 
were made for the soldier and his family such as 
no nation had ever dreamed of before. While the 
compensation of both private soldiers and officers 
during the war, in direct pay, bounties, and rations, 
had been upon a scale of liberality unknown before 
in the military annals of the world, the legislation 
in their behalf since the war ended has been of the 
most thoughtful, considerate, and unstinted kind. 
Before ten years had passed, every possible injury 
or disease incurred in the service of the country 
seemed to be reached by the most generously 
worded provisions, while innumerable private bills 
had been passed from time to time to cover special 
cases of misfortune or want. To give single in- 
stances of the tender oversight which the nation 
was extending to those who had suffered in her 
behalf, the pension of the soldier who had died 
from wound or disease was given from the first 
to his widow, child, or dependent mother, or 
orphan sister (till sixteen). Three years after the 
war $2 a month was added for each child under 
sixteen. The amount for soldiers who had lost 
both hands was raised by three successive acts from 
$2$ (1864) to $31 (1872), from $31 to $50 (1874), 
from $50 to $72 (1878). Had our pension legisla- 
tion stopped abruptly ten years ago, the families of 
all who had suffered in the war, from the lowest 
private to the highest general, would be drawing 
from the public treasury to-day an income which 
would leave no just claim ungratified, and which, 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS IOQ 

in any other country but America, would be con- 
sidered princely. 

It is true that such debts as the nation owes to 
its defenders cannot be measured in dollars and 
cents, and from this point of view any payments 
from the Treasury might be considered small; but 
it is also true that it cheapens the sentiment of 
patriotism to suggest that such debts can have a 
money value, or that the dollars received are in- 
tended as a full requital of the services rendered. 
Had this been the conception of the citizen's duty 
twenty-five or thirty years ago, few youths would 
have left their homes for the battlefield, and there 
would have been few graves, day before yesterday, 
for our veterans to strew with flowers. Since wars 
began, the soldier has sought his highest reward 
in his own deeds of daring and self-sacrifice and 
in his country's admiration and gratitude. A sad 
comment on our republic would it be that, when 
her hour of peril came, her defenders, for the first 
time in the world's history, had calculated the cost 
of their sacrifices before throwing themselves into 
the struggle or had presented their bill of expenses 
when the struggle was over. Fortunately for us, 
they did no such thing. As with all brave men 
who had gone before them, the victory of the cause 
for which they fought was their sufficient recom- 
pense; and the provisions for their welfare which 
the nation added afterward were accepted with 
dignity and gratitude. Ten years ago the nation's 
generosity was fully appreciated; and, if there 



110 DISCOURSES 

were any murmurs of discontent, it was not from 
the soldiers themselves. Nor, I think, could the 
world at large, or even the most devoted friend of 
the soldier, charge the nation with parsimony, 
when told that up to 1879, out °f considerably less 
than three million soldiers, 398,294 pensions had 
been already granted, and nearly $400,000,000 dis- 
bursed. 

But, unfortunately, it was not the soldiers alone 
who thought themselves concerned in the matter. 
The making out of so many thousand claims and 
the expenditure of so many millions of dollars 
proved so lucrative a business, and the possibility 
of extending these claims in various directions 
proved so strong a temptation, that a great and 
thriving trade sprang up, based upon the soldier's 
needs. Plenty of honest men there were, no doubt, 
among these pension agents; but outside this lesser 
circle was formed a far larger ring, whose sole 
thought was to awaken discontent among the re- 
cipients of pensions, and bring to bear upon Con- 
gress a pressure, apparently from the people them- 
selves, for an increase of the nation's liberal 
gratuities. The country was flooded with circulars 
and appeals, military societies were led on step by 
step to countenance these friendly efforts in their 
behalf, public sentiment was quietly and success- 
fully played upon to sympathize with the soldier's 
sufferings and to forget that anything had yet been 
done to relieve him, politicians were reminded of 
the rich party capital to be secured by coming 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS III 

forward as the soldiers' friends, until an entirely 
new era of pension legislation, unknown to the 
period of the war itself, began. 

I should weary you to no purpose if I attempted 
to show the various steps of this scandalous process ; 
but two instances will be enough to prove how de- 
moralizing its influence has been, both upon our 
national character and upon our national politics. 

In 1879, fourteen years after the war, a bill was 
introduced into Congress providing for what was 
innocently called the "arrears of pensions." When 
pensions were first granted, it was naturally and 
properly provided that payment should begin when 
the application was made, unless made within a 
year, when payment was to date back to the time 
of discharge from the service. In two subsequent 
bills this time was generously extended, first to 
three years, then, in 1868, to five, it being con- 
sidered that five years was ample time for any gen- 
uine claimant to discover his wounds or disability 
and present his claims. 

By the year 1879, however, this had been found 
to be a great wrong. No matter how late the 
soldier might be in applying for a pension, no 
matter though for fourteen years he had not re- 
garded himself a fit subject for the nation's charity, 
or though for still another year he should keep off 
her list of beneficiaries, whenever he should secure 
a pension, he should receive not the pension only, 
but back payments from the moment of discharge 
from the service. This applied equally to pensions 



112 DISCOURSES 

already granted. The passage of this bill was one 
of the most humiliating incidents of our political 
history, and marked, as nothing else could have 
done, the decline of public sentiment since the 
close of the war. I am not giving my own opinion 
alone. Three or four years before a far less ob- 
jectionable bill (Equalization of Bounties Bill) 
had been vetoed by President Grant as needlessly 
extravagant, as wholly uncalled for, as offering the 
most dangerous inducements to fraud, as not de- 
manded by the soldiers themselves, and as not 
likely, if passed, to benefit them so much as the 
over-zealous agents who were the real authors of 
the movement. In 1879 tne same arguments were 
offered against the Bill for Arrears of Pensions, 
the Secretary of the Treasury gave warning that it 
would cost $150,000,000, no whisper of a demand 
came from those who were supposed to need it ; but 
it was pushed through almost without debate, and 
with the slightest possible precautions against fraud. 
Instead of $150,000,000, it cost the nation $500,- 
000,000. 

The second instance is facing us to-day. The 
Act of 1879 nas produced its anticipated results, 
and more. The recipients of that magnificent 
plunder — the agents, I mean, not the soldiers — 
have shown themselves keener and keener for spoils 
so easily won. Hardly a session of Congress, hardly 
a month of any session, has passed without some 
new pension bill. The safeguards once thought 
necessary to protect the soldiers' good name and 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS II3 

save the Treasury from actual fraud have been grad- 
ually relaxed, so that certain classes of deserters 
(1882) have been granted pensions with the rest. 
The annual appropriation has risen from $12,000,- 
000 in 1866 and $59,000,000 in 1886 to more than 
$100,000,000 in 1890. We find ourselves in the 
extraordinary and even grotesque position to-day 
of paying in pensions to our former soldiers more 
than any European nation pays for its standing 
army; and yet at this moment two bills are passing 
back and forth between the United States Senate 
and House which, if adopted, will add 200,000 or 
380,000 new names to the pension roll, and increase 
the annual expenditure by $40,000,000 to $80,000,- 
000, or, if certain pending amendments are adopted, 
by $470,000,000. 

What are these schemes which demand such an 
unparalleled outlay, and which, if carried through, 
will make all previous gifts to the soldiers seem 
parsimonious and pitiful? What new necessities 
have suddenly been discovered which the keen eye 
of all previous statesmanship had overlooked? 
Two, it seems, which these two bills, one in the 
Senate, the other in the House, are kindly calcu- 
lated to meet. In the first place, it has been found 
that, besides those soldiers who were wounded or 
disabled in actual service, are many who came back 
to their homes strong and able-bodied, but who 
have broken down since (then, or been unsuccess- 
ful in their affairs, or for some cause find them- 
selves poorly off in the world, and so are told to 



114 DISCOURSES 

look to their country to support them. Up to 
this time, in every land and among all nations, 
the soldier has been held to have no claim except 
for disabilities incurred in or resulting from actual 
service (at least until overtaken by extreme old 
age). Now, however, this is regarded an unpar- 
donable evasion of national responsibilities; and 
a measure is proposed whereby all who served three 
months in the War of the Rebellion, whether at 
the front at the post of exposure or not, and who 
have since, from any cause except vicious habits, 
become incapacitated for labor, and yet are depen- 
dent upon their daily labor, whether already re- 
ceiving pensions or not, shall receive twelve dol- 
lars a month for life. If such soldier has died or 
shall die, leaving dependent parents, they shall 
receive the same benefaction. Startling as this 
proposition is, and notwithstanding the same or 
a similar bill was vetoed three years ago, under 
a previous administration, as turning the pension 
roll from a roll of honor into a monstrous charity 
list, it has nevertheless (March 31, 1890) passed 
the present Senate with hardly a word in opposi- 
tion, and but twelve votes against it. 

But, however extraordinary this removal of all 
distinction between heroic and non-heroic may 
seem, it becomes altogether innocent when com- 
pared with the sister measure which has already 
passed the United States House of Representatives. 
So open-handed has the nation been in its dealings, 
and so enormously has the number of its beneficia- 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS II5 

ries increased from year to year, that it has begun 
to seem to many quite invidious to make any dis- 
tinction at all. Why discriminate between the 
men who had the good fortune to receive wounds 
in the nation's service and those who had the bad 
fortune to come out without a scratch? Why 
withhold the nation's bounty so jealously from any 
who (whether for three years or for thirty days) 
figured in the national uniform? Why not treat all 
alike? Such, at least, seems to be the view of our 
legislators, as the bill to which I have alluded 
sweeps away at a stroke all cumbersome restric- 
tions, and enacts that any man who served in either 
army or navy, and has reached the age of sixty, 
shall receive eight dollars a month until his death. 
This ends, so far, the sorry tale. The two Houses 
are in conference as to which of the measures will 
please the soldiers most; but, as thus far no back- 
ward step has been taken, and neither House and 
neither political party dares to seem less complai- 
sant than the other, it is more than probable that 
they will extricate themselves from the perplexity 
by combining the two bills and retaining the most 
exorbitant provisions of each. Such, at least, 
seems to be the expectation of those who are in 
position to know, while the addition to our annual 
expenditures called for by such a compromise 
measure is variously estimated, from $50,000,000 
to $150,000,000 or $200,000,000. In a word, if 
this deed is consummated, when this Congress ad- 
journs, we shall have pledged ourselves to a pen- 



Il6 DISCOURSES 

sion appropriation of at least $150,000,000 a year; 
while, out of the 2,800,000 men who served in the 
war, it is estimated that about 950,000, or one 
out of every three, will become recipients of the 
nation's charity. 

And this measure, let me add, to make my state- 
ment complete, this measure which is now on the 
eve of consummation, this measure which increases 
threefold the sum ten years ago thought a lavish 
appropriation for the country's defenders, this 
measure which removes the distinction between 
brave men and cowards, and offers a splendid pre- 
mium on pauperism, this measure which throws a 
dark cloud over the period of our national struggle 
and makes its fine patriotism seem but a greedy 
rush for booty, is about to become a law without a 
single effort to defeat it, and with hardly a voice 
lifted against it. A silence like that which fell 
upon the North fifty years ago, whenever the en- 
croachments of slavery were in question, falls upon 
the whole country to-day, whenever the subject of 
pensions arises. In the face of this monstrous 
wrong, this growing corruption, this blow at all 
that was purest and noblest in the only great war 
which our nation has undertaken, not a single 
public man of prominence (with one or two excep- 
tions) utters a protest, neither party dares to record 
itself in opposition, the press is almost silent, 
while the pulpit passes it by for the most part as 
outside its sphere. So far as public utterances are 
concerned, the younger generation might grow up 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS II7 

in absolute ignorance that as gross an indignity had 
been put upon our departed heroes and as corrupt- 
ing an influence introduced into our political life 
as the history of our country records. 

For this is not a mere question of figures or of 
dollars which I have brought to your attention this 
morning. The question is not whether our Treas- 
ury can bear this stupendous and increasing drain : 
it is whether our national character can bear this 
constant assault upon its integrity and purity. 
Consider it first in the mere light of its extrava- 
gance. If extravagance in private affairs is one of 
the crying evils of the day, what shall we say of 
this gross extravagance in public affairs? If we 
have no right to waste our own property, how much 
worse is it when we waste the property of others? 
What harder blow could be struck at simplicity of 
living, or at the homely virtues of contentment and 
economy, than this reckless fashion of dissipating 
the public funds? One of the most significant feat- 
ures of the legislation of which I have been speak- 
ing is the free and easy way in which its advocates 
learn to speak of the expenditure of millions, and 
the growing audacity with which they allude to the 
cost of their schemes of plunder. Their ideas ex- 
pand with their opportunities. At first $10,000,- 
000 seemed to them a mighty sum to spend upon 
pensions; but now a United States Senator, in ad- 
vocating an amendment to the Dependent Bill, 
remarks, with entire indifference, that he "thought 
it very likely that the cost would reach $600,000,- 



Il8 DISCOURSES 

ooo, and it might reach a billion." "It is time to 
call a halt," he added, "on such low and selfish 
considerations as are raised against the payment of 
that debt." 

But turn from the legislators to the soldiers 
whom this legislation is supposed to serve. One 
of the saddest spectacles which we have had to wit- 
ness is the changed attitude and tone of the veterans 
of the war as these pension projects have advanced. 
At first they had nothing to do with the schemes, 
and made no demands whatever. At first, indeed, 
they had to be sought out and urged to accept the 
public bounty. Between the first year of the war 
and the third (the first pension law being enacted 
in 1862) the number of applicants for State or na- 
tional aid actually diminished. In 1865 the num- 
ber was reported as "exceedingly small," — far 
smaller than public expectation or the actual prep- 
arations warranted. But, from the moment of the 
enactment of the wholesale law for the payment of 
arrears in 1879, this dignified and self-respecting 
deportment was changed. Instead of expressing 
gratitude to the country for its unparalleled munifi- 
cence, they began to urge claims for greater aid. 
Instead of waiting for others to extol their merits, 
they began to speak themselves of the debt the coun- 
try owed them, and to allude threateningly to "the 
soldier vote." One step led to another, each more 
brazen and insolent than the last. Three years ago 
a committee of Congress was coolly told by a repre- 
sentative of the Grand Army of the Republic, " If 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS 1 19 

you do not pass this bill [the Disability Bill] 
soon, you will have to pass a universal pension 
bill." At the National Encampment of the Grand 
Army in 1888 it was "resolved" (by a vote of 356 
to 22), "That this Encampment favors the presenta- 
tion of a bill to Congress which will give to every 
soldier, sailor, and marine who served in the army 
or navy of the United States between April, 1861, 
and July, 1865, for the period of sixty days or 
more, a service pension of $8 per month, and to all 
who served a period exceeding eight hundred days 
an additional amount of one cent per day for each 
day's service exceeding that period." But within 
the last week the climax of this sort of effrontery 
seems to have been reached in a resolution passed 
by a Western encampment of the same order, to 
this effect: "We now demand of the Congress of 
the United States &per diem service pension [i.e., 
for every man in the service] pure and simple." 
Who could recognize under this guise the old ideal 
of the nation's patriotic citizen-soldier? And who 
can wonder, when these things are said and done, 
that the youth of the present generation are losing 
something of the admiration in which hitherto our 
citizen-soldiers have been held? 

It is this last aspect of the case on which I wish 
especially to dwell. Those of us who know what 
the soldiers of the late war really were, and what 
their survivors for the most part still are, cannot 
bear to see their good repute so sadly endangered 
or to have them judged by their least honorable rep- 



120 DISCOURSES 

resentatives. Yet what else is to be hoped for if 
this downward path is to be continued? And what 
is to be expected of any class of citizens who find 
themselves, good and bad, idle and industrious 
alike, invited to look to the public bounty for their 
support? We are all trying in a small way to 
lessen the number of paupers in the country and 
teach the dependent classes the inestimable lesson 
of self-respect and self-dependence. But what will 
our labors be worth with a class of paupers in every 
community whom our efforts cannot reach? The 
united endeavors of all the wisest philanthropists 
in all our cities to substitute self-support for 
beggary will be like sweeping back the waves of 
the ocean, so long as the nation itself is feeding a 
horde of hungry mendicants at the public table. 
In the name of the soldiers as a class and of the 
community as a whole, let us protest against this 
mediaeval policy. 

I am sorry to have devoted this summer Sunday 
to such a lament; yet it has seemed to me an un- 
avoidable duty, however remote the topic may 
be from our usual themes. Modern reformers, 
when they interfere with the working of public 
affairs, are apt to be called pessimistic. But, if 
this is pessimism, it is the pessimism of simple 
facts, only half stated, which I have suffered, so far 
as possible, to speak for themselves. The pulpit is 
often charged with being vague and general in its 
denunciations, and dealing with sin in the abstract 
rather than with particular offences. I bring before 



AN INDIGNITY TO OUR CITIZEN SOLDIERS 121 

you this morning a very specific iniquity, and am 
much disappointed if I have not succeeded in de- 
scribing it in the most definite terms which the 
English language affords. I am anxious to leave 
upon you the impression that the entire pension 
legislation of the last ten years is the most disrepu- 
table business in which an honorable nation could 
possibly engage, that it carries in itself all the ele- 
ments of corruption, hypocrisy, and demoralization, 
that it is not called for by patriotism, by charity, 
or by statesmanship, that it is a burlesque upon 
statesmanship, that it is a libel upon charity, and 
that it strikes the most cruel blow at patriotism 
which that noble sentiment ever received. So far 
as its further encroachments are concerned, we 
seem for the moment to be powerless; yet this 
makes it all the more important that the present 
inexplicable apathy should somehow be shaken, so 
that the beautiful anniversary which has just passed 
may resume once more its ancient charm, and we 
may be able to enter again, as tenderly as twenty- 
five years ago, into the pathos of the words, 
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man 
lay down his life for his friends." 

1890. 



X. 

THE DIVINE HUMANITY. 

A SERMON FOR CHRISTMAS. 
"Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? " — Matt. xvi. 13. 

The day we have just celebrated in our homes 
and to which we devote our thoughts this morning 
suggests to me an interesting analogy. I find my- 
self thinking of our own earthly lives, and the story 
that many a one could tell if asked in middle life 
what had been the chief agency in making him 
what he was. To show more clearly what is in my 
mind, let us suppose such a man, for whom every- 
thing has been done in childhood and youth to 
form his character and mind, who has enjoyed the 
best education which school or college could give, 
who has felt the highest religious influences which 
the Church can offer, and has been accustomed 
from his earliest days to habits of worship and 
prayer, yet who, if you asked him to what single 
influence he owed most among all these varied 
helps, should say, the personal influence, the daily 
walk, the hourly companionship of father or mother. 
Through all else that had come between, or had 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 1 23 

been superadded as the years passed on, he could 
go back to the power over him of that one human 
life. Such cases, as you all know, are not un- 
common. I have not gone far for my analogy, yet 
I find in this familiar fact the starting-point which 
I need for my Christmas discourse. 

I would liken the Christian world, in its career 
of eighteen centuries, to this young life. Chris- 
tendom has had much to aid it from the beginning. 
Sacred traditions from the past gathered around 
its cradle, holy names were breathed in its ears, 
heavenly images were held before its eyes, solemn 
confessions fell from its lips. Churches sprang up, 
with splendid ceremonial, to kindle its reverence 
and awe and feed the spirit of devotion; spiritual 
guides appeared, claiming to keep unbroken the 
succession of Christ and the apostles; mystic creeds 
were elaborated, to keep alive and intensify men's 
faith. The presence of God was assured to them, 
and the entrance of Christ into their hearts made 
real, by daily rites. You know the whole story 
better than I can tell it, and you know that no such 
gigantic or imposing ceremonial has ever been 
devised since the world began as that which was 
constructed to support and sustain the faith of 
Christendom. Yet I would remind you to-day that 
the one reality behind these stupendous forms, 
the only fact which explains their existence or 
which has made them possible, is an obscure human 
life, with its purely human antecedents and conse- 
quences, which was spent eighteen hundred years 



124 DISCOURSES 

ago in Galilee. The Church has surrounded these 
hours with splendid observances, — some of them 
beautiful and grand, — and it uses many stately 
epithets to emphasize its praise; but the one thing 
which demands our gratitude to-day is the birth 
into the world of a pure and holy soul. On that 
thought and its mighty significance we cannot too 
profoundly dwell, — the power of a human soul. 

Yes, you say, the human element no doubt is 
there; but so also are these stately forms and holy 
traditions, with the sanctity of ages breathing 
through them and glorifying them. Why thrust 
them aside in honor of the bare fact of a human 
birth, such as takes place any day or hour of the 
Christian year? Only because all these grand ob- 
servances followed, not preceded, that bare fact, 
and grew palpably out of it; and to give them 
alone our thought is to reverse the divine order and 
deny one of the sublimest facts of history. It is 
the human which is in danger of being thrust aside, 
— the divineness of the human spirit which suffers 
loss, and which we are called upon to restore to its 
supreme place in the world's regard. Splendid 
indeed is the religious faith, magnificent the eccle- 
siastical structure, which has based itself on that 
life in distant Judaea; how grand, then, beyond 
the power of words, must have been the spiritual 
power to call all this into being and enshrine it 
so deeply in human affections and faith ! Pure and 
gracious, indeed, the life, and rare the personality, 
which could give birth in later] generations to such 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 1 25 

sublime ideals, which could make men dream of 
a divine spirit descending from heaven to dwell 
among them, which could so entrance their imagi- 
nations that they believed God himself to have in- 
carnated himself in human form ! Gracious, in- 
deed, the influence which could lead them to call 
him Lord and Master, and convince them that his 
appearance in the world had solved forever the 
problem of human guilt and wrong, and offered, 
once for all, a sacrifice which made all other 
atonement and penitence superfluous ! Marvellous, 
in a word, the traditions and the beliefs which 
controlled men's lives for ages; all the more 
marvellous, then, the earthly facts and incidents, 
so far as we can decipher them, which gave 
those traditions birth! Honor to whom honor is 
due. Let not the wondrous effects be mistaken 
for the cause, or the luxuriant outgrowth hide from 
your eyes the primitive and simple source. 

But, surely, we hear it said, something more than 
a human soul was necessary to produce such momen- 
tous results. How explain the Church and its his- 
toric career, how explain Christianity or Christen- 
dom, on these purely human grounds? But how 
explain the father's or mother's influence over the 
son? Ask the son how or when or why this power 
acted upon his soul, or what it was, or wherein its 
mighty influence lay, and what will he tell you? 
Will he say to you, How could that power have 
been exerted on my growing nature, how could 
those wayward passions of mine have been con- 



126 DISCOURSES 

trolled, those fierce animal appetites and propensi- 
ties been tamed, those pure aspirations have taken 
the place of my grosser instincts, unless some 
greater than human agency had intervened? In- 
deed, no! If there is anything human, it is the 
mother's tenderness and love, it is the father's 
high example or strong guidance towards manli- 
ness and truth. It is human; yet what miracles of 
purity and integrity does it work! To deny it is 
to deny one of the grandest and sweetest facts of 
our earthly lives, is to defame the affection and 
care which have encircled us all in their protect- 
ing arms. Call it divine, if you prefer; but, then, 
you have no further use at all for the word "human," 
and it may as well be struck at once from our 
vocabulary. Is not life's lesson rather, and the 
lessons of these pure souls, to show the beauty and 
power of human influence, to deepen our admira- 
tion and reverence for it, and bid us look to it for 
the holiest possibilities? Honor to whom honor 
is due. In these earthly struggles of ours let us 
pay unstinted homage to the human influences 
which have played about our childhood and youth, 
never taking visible form, perhaps, yet unutter- 
ably helpful and real. In those early struggles of 
Christendom, whose memories call for our gratitude 
to-day, let us pay unstinted and unreluctant hom- 
age to the exalted human career which gave form 
and vitality to those fair Christian ideals. While 
many, as they look back to those far-off days, are 
led to argue, because such wonderful ends have been 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 127 

achieved, therefore human agencies could not have 
produced them, I would rather argue, because those 
results have been achieved by apparently human 
agencies, therefore human agencies could produce 
them. This is the very lesson they have to teach; 
this is the very recognition they are claiming from 
us. Among the many influences evidently at work 
at the birth of Christianity, the one thing not to 
be forgotten is the human insight, devotion, spirit- 
uality, faith, which lay behind them all. Among 
the many devices which the Christian Church has 
invented to enhance the dignity of its founder and 
glorify his memory, the one thing not to be forgot- 
ten is the founder, the man himself. 

But let us pay heed to-day, you say, to all which 
has contributed to sanctify these hours, and lend 
them grace and beauty. Let us not forget the sub- 
lime ideal of the "Word made flesh" which fills 
many souls to-day, or the poetic traditions which 
have gathered about this hour and have given it 
such charm to the Christian imagination. What 
would Christmas be, after all, without the virgin 
birth and the angel song, without the star in the east 
or the wise men with their frankincense and myrrh, 
without the "shepherds in the field by night" 
and the glory of the Lord which "shone round about 
them" ? Yes, the traditions and the poetry of the 
hour are part of its infinite charm; but what would 
become of it all had there not been a living soul 
pure and holy enough to have created the poetry 
and the traditions? Poetry is one of the sacred 



128 DISCOURSES 

joys of life, but poetry does not spring out of 
nothing. Imagination, grand and creative force 
though it be. must have the material on which it 
is to work. The imagination, in its boldest flights, 
has never yet transcended human limits or used 
other than earthly material. Infinitely varied the 
combinations it can make with its simple facts or 
the hidden meanings it can find in them, but the 
facts must first be there. Grand, indeed, are many 
of those old-time visions of the Christ, but grander 
yet the man Jesus whose life could have inspired 
them. Beautiful these Christmas traditions, more 
beautiful still the birth around which they have so 
lovingly entwined themselves. We miss the mean- 
ing of the hour unless it teaches us the power of 
a holy life to inspire poetry and create in other 
souls lofty ideals. Far away from the realities of 
that Galilean life should we be, did we not under- 
stand its secret of playing age after age upon all 
the multiform emotions, sentiments, fancies, long- 
ings, hopes, of the souls which have turned to it 
for guidance and inspiration. 

Nor, if it has had that power, are we to discredit, 
of course, the visions or imaginings which it has 
produced. Many a great truth does poetry reveal to 
the human mind. Poetry and falsehood are by no 
means synonymous terms : rather does poetry often 
lead us on to the hidden meaning, the spiritual 
sense, the deeper truth, which the bare fact con- 
ceals. In many a mediaeval creed, in many a 
patristic hymn, on many a fourteenth or fifteenth 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 1 29 

century canvas, is there some great truth seeking 
figurative or symbolic utterance. In many of these 
Christmas traditions lies unquestionably a fine 
thought, which finds in poetry its fittest speech. 
As poetry they are beautiful, as carrying in them- 
selves poetic truth they are precious ; but as sub- 
stituting' themselves for the historic facts which 
inspired them, still more as disowning or dis- 
crediting those facts, they become altogether offen- 
sive and false. Lovely is that bit of landscape 
which hangs upon your walls. How exquisitely 
the painter has caught the spirit of those frowning 
skies, or those graceful meadow undulations, or 
those stern and ragged cliffs! Only an artist 
could have caught nature's mood as she produced 
the sweetness or the severity of that scene; only 
an artist would have known what features to transfer 
to his canvas, that we, too, might enter into nat- 
ure's finer thoughts. Yet the artist does not claim 
to have hung upon your wall a reproduction of Nat- 
ure herself, for that would be to vulgarize both 
nature and art. He has given you his meditation 
upon nature's theme, nature being forever the 
source of his inspiration. You know nature better 
and love her more for this poetic interpretation of 
her meaning; but nature remains nature still, a 
theme which no artist's thought has ever fully read 
and no artist's imagination has ever transcended. 
So is it with these ancient traditions which have 
entwined themselves about the birth of Christ. 
They are the poet's meditation upon that unique 



130 . DISCOURSES 

theme, helping us, perhaps, to enter the better 
into its deeper meaning or beauty, emphasizing for 
us its rarer features, yet remaining poetry still. 
In its poetry are its beauty and its truth. Turn it 
into fact, and you vulgarize both the poetry and 
the fact. It is the poet's interpretation of one of 
humanity's sublimest hours; but humanity re- 
mains humanity still, a theme which no poet's 
thought has ever fully read and which no poet's 
imagination has ever yet transcended. In that 
hour a human soul came to life. Amplify, enrich, 
symbolize, enhance, that fact as you will, the su- 
preme fact still remains the birth itself. 

Yet how much better, it will be claimed by 
many, even though it were possible to reduce the 
events of these hours to simple human incidents, 
to call in the divine to our aid. Surely there is a 
divine element in all human events. How much 
better to emphasize, as all Christendom is doing, 
the divine side of the birth of Christ than to insist 
upon its literal, earthly character! As a mere 
matter of association or a question of words, is it 
not better to take such exceptional events as these 
out of their common relations, and exhibit them 
in their more sacred character? They are really 
divine, if anything is divine. Why not call them 
so, and remove them as far as possible from all 
natural laws? Is it not better, by the same 
reasoning, I reply, even though the parental influ- 
ence which has made us what we are be wholly 
human, to call it divine? Would it not give it 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 131 

higher significance and worth? This power of 
father or mother over the child is really inexpli- 
cable, is really divine, if anything is divine. Why 
not call it so? Why not minimize in our own 
memories of the past the personal influence of the 
living parent, and attribute it all directly to God? 
Why not persuade the youth to thrust aside the 
literal thought of his mother's loving care or his 
father's strong guidance, and recall only supernat- 
ural strength and help? Is it not, on the contrary, 
far better for the youth (for this question can have 
but one answer) to appreciate to the full the 
human foresight, devotion, and self-sacrifice amid 
which he lives? Is there any sublimer fact in 
heaven or on earth than this very influence of soul 
upon soul or life upon life, — this power of affec- 
tion, of purity, of uprightness, of gentleness, of 
constancy, to break down the mightiest strongholds 
of evil in the breast and win invisible victories for 
virtue? Here is a positive and indisputable fact. 
Do we help matters by getting as far from it as 
possible and disguising it in vague and symbolic 
terms, or is it better for the simple fact to be 
stated in the simplest and most explicit words? 
Do we help matters by trying to get away from the 
obvious meaning of any of these human and earthly 
truths, or these purely natural laws, by which our 
earthly lives are encompassed? Do we gain any- 
thing by obscuring or belittling any of God's 
eternal facts? If the parental influence upon the 
child is the mightiest agency (apart from its own 



132 DISCOURSES 

intelligence and will, I mean) by which its early- 
life is shaped, then say exactly that, and find out 
all it means. If it be an historic fact that about 
eighteen hundred and ninety years ago a man- 
child came into the earth who, by virtue of 
his purely human birth and human life, was to 
lift many nations into a higher spiritual life and 
thought, then say exactly that, and learn all that it 
means. Take it at its full worth. Do not try to 
better it by your poor devices or to substitute for 
the homely reality some fine creation of poetry or 
romance. Do not fear that divine providence has 
made a mistake which it is incumbent upon you to 
rectify, and do not fear that that providence will de- 
termine upon any course which will not bear a clear 
and honest statement. If this particular thing is 
so, then it is a stupendous fact which it behooves us 
all to weigh well and understand as best we can. 
Human nature is entitled to the credit of all its 
high achievements. If among its possibilities is 
that of giving birth to so exalted a nature and be- 
stowing upon the world a religion which, with all 
its shortcomings, has controlled the civilization 
of eighteen centuries, let us rejoice to recognize 
this inspiring fact. So much nearer are we to a 
true estimate of our common humanity, so much 
profounder a sense have we of what that saying 
means, — a human soul is born into the world. A 
human soul! What a divine creation is that! 
What infinite possibilities, it seems, lie wrapped 
in it ! To what lofty heights of faith can it climb, 



THE DIVINE HUMANITY 1 33 

to what generous hopes can it lend itself, to what 
large service of its fellows can it devote its powers, 
through how many centuries can it prolong its in- 
fluences, to what high resolves can it enkindle the 
human breast, what splendid visions can it catch 
of unseen and unattained realities, what inspiring 
utterance can it give to its holier thoughts and 
trusts, what noble record of itself can it leave 
upon the page of history for all generations to 
read, and by which age after age shall be stirred! 
Give glad welcome to these Christmas hours. I 
am not sure that there is any church in Christen- 
dom which has so great a right to this anniversary 
as we. What meaning has a birthday if there was 
no real birth? What matters it that we fix the 
day and month and year, if all that happened then, 
or seemed to happen, was pure illusion, and the 
human form that was assumed was a mere cloak for 
the divine? To us that birth was real. To us 
that life was genuine throughout. For us, then, 
this Christmas hour has immense significance. It 
marks the entrance into the world of a great soul : 
it tells of the advent of a holy and beautiful life, 
under whose influences men's thoughts were turned 
to higher things and men's faith in eternal realities 
made strong. If marvellous results have flowed 
from that life, it only proves, not that supernatural 
agencies must have been called in, but with how 
much mightier powers the human soul is endowed 
than we commonly believe. It only chides us for 
our little faith. To him who showed such un- 



134 DISCOURSES 

faltering trust in the soul's higher faculties, and 
who rebukes us to-day, as he rebuked his disciples 
of old, for our feebler faith, we gladly consecrate 
this hour. It is a joy to recall such a life. It is a 
privilege to offer it the tribute of our gratitude. 

1 891. 



XI. 
AUTHORITY. 

" He taught them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." — Matt. vii. 29. 

If there is any one thing more surprising than 
the rapid changes going on in the religious world 
to-day, it is the power which the ancient beliefs 
and the ancient churches still retain over those who 
cling to them. In the face of disproofs and against 
the entire spirit and tendencies of modern thought, 
the old faith still shows amazing force. In fact, it 
is very noticeable how small a part actual argument 
or reasoning seems to play in men's religious 
progress. One of our living historians long ago 
pointed out this fact, and illustrated it with great 
eloquence and force, claiming it as a universal law. 
"Every great change of belief," Mr. Lecky says 
(speaking of the growth of rationalism in Europe), 
"has been preceded by a great change in the intel- 
lectual condition of Europe, the success of any opin- 
ion depending much less upon the force of its ar- 
guments or upon the ability of its advocates than 
upon the predisposition of society to receive it, that 
predisposition resulting from the intellectual type 
of the age. Thus, long before the Reformation, 



I36 DISCOURSES 

the tendencies of the Reformation were manifest. 
Luther and Calvin only represented the prevailing 
wants, and embodied them in a definite form. A 
change of speculative opinions does not imply an 
increase of the data upon which those opinions rest, 
but a change in the habits of mind and thought 
which they reflect. Definite arguments are the 
symptoms and pretexts, but seldom the causes of 
the change. Their chief merit is to accelerate the 
crisis. As a rule, civilization makes opinions that 
are opposed to it simply obsolete. They perish by 
indifference, not by controversy. They are rele- 
gated to the dim twilight land that surrounds every 
living faith, — the land not of death, but of the 
shadow of death, the land of the unrealized and the 
inoperative." This seems to me a remarkably true 
picture of what is going on about us to-day. Great 
changes are in the air; but they are brought about, 
not by convincing any one of the inadequacy of his 
creed, so much as through certain general tendencies 
of thought and methods of inquiry which, for the 
most part, have produced their effect before the in- 
dividual knows that anything has happened. Mean- 
time, however, for those who do not yet feel the 
currents of intellectual life, or who are distressed by 
the confusion and unrest of the times, the old faiths 
hold out strange attractions. Among the churches 
of Christendom those which offer the most positive 
beliefs and speak with most authoritative voice are 
unquestionably, for the hour, the strongest. Ro- 
manism itself, despite the enormous losses it has 



AUTHORITY 1 37 

sustained in our generation, astonishes us from time 
to time by a display of influence (as in Germany a 
few years ago, and in republican France to-day) 
which makes us wonder whether the power of priest- 
craft will ever die out in the world. In our Prot- 
estant churches, too, such a revival of priestly 
influence shows itself now and then, such a renewal 
of the priestly tone, and such a devotion to priestly 
rites that the same question arises there. Is not 
the priest more potent still than prophet or thinker? 
Without questioning for a moment the final outcome 
of modern inquiry or the final triumph of the larger 
truth, we cannot help paying heed at times to this 
strange phenomenon, the extraordinary mastery 
which still inheres in priestly authority. 

How shall we explain it? Very simply, I think. 
The human soul, as a rule, does crave authority. 
It asks to be led. Throw it back upon its own 
judgment or its own intuitions or its own faith, and 
it does not thank you. Promise it unfettered spirit- 
ual or intellectual freedom, and it scorns your offer. 
It does not wish to be cast upon its own resources 
or to be left alone with its own thoughts. It pre- 
fers to lean upon others rather than to stand by 
itself. In the perplexities of moral struggle and 
the conflict of spiritual problems there are few who 
can trust their own judgment: there are many who 
long for guidance and example. In the world's 
affairs there is always room for the masterful nat- 
ure, sure of its opinions and accustomed to lead ; 
in religious matters, where one is naturally still 



I38 DISCOURSES 

more distrustful of himself, where the problems are 
so weighty, and the consequences of error seem so 
momentous, there is still ampler room. People 
tire of pondering over obscure themes. To many- 
all intellectual processes are difficult and unfamiliar. 
To almost every earnest soul the time comes per- 
haps, when argument is so wearisome and the sense 
of responsibility so overwhelming that the longing 
for guidance, the desire for a strong voice or hand 
or an imperious will, becomes irresistible. To 
souls in such moods of self-surrender, to souls 
fatigued by the very persistency of modern inquiry 
or deafened by the clamor of modern debate, the 
church which can speak with most authoritative 
tone appeals naturally with greatest force. The 
more despotic it is, the more welcome it is. The 
more tyrannous its behests or oppressive its exac- 
tions, the greater its success. No wonder, then, 
that the Church renounces none of its pretensions 
at the bidding of modern thought. It has nothing 
to do with argument. It makes no account of 
reason. It simply finds souls waiting to be led, 
and offers to lead them. It finds the religious 
world still craving authority, and supplies that au- 
thority. It claims a divine sanction. It claims 
to bring heavenly wisdom, heavenly mandates, 
heavenly support, to fainting human hearts. So 
we have the contrast nowadays of the most un- 
bridled intellectual freedom and scepticism over 
against the most devout self-effacement and piety. 
In other lands the contrast is far more conspicuous 



AUTHORITY 1 39 

than here. In the older countries of Europe almost 
every community, and among certain classes almost 
every family, is leading two lives side by side, — a 
life of intellectual freedom, in which religious be- 
liefs are ignored, and a life of religious and even 
monastic devotion, in which modern thought is 
ignored. One world for the fathers, another world 
for the mothers and children. 

And why, if human nature is so constituted and 
if religious truth is so momentous, is not this 
priestly religion the best? Why is it not a benefit 
to the world that priestcraft should prevail? If the 
soul needs spiritual authority, one would say, then, 
the more of it, the better. And so, indeed, it might 
be but for two considerations. First, it is to be 
remembered that, while genuine authority helps 
the soul's spiritual life, spurious authority does the 
soul infinite harm. Had the Christian Church been 
actually invested with divine functions or with in- 
fallible knowledge, its priestly tone might have been 
altogether beneficent; but, once that claim being 
found to have no historic foundation, the louder its 
pretensions, the greater the world's disappointment 
and its growing contempt of all authority. When 
we speak of the thousands who find in the shelter 
of the infallible Church a glad refuge from the 
world's troubles and doubts, we must not forget the 
other thousands or tens of thousands who have found 
their trust mocked, and have been driven under the 
same influences into absolute scepticism and de- 
spair. The priestly Church is responsible to-day 



140 DISCOURSES 

for every soul thus forced into denial or doubt 
through pretensions of authority which could not be 
maintained before reason or fact; for the deceived, 
betrayed, beguiled multitudes who, having trusted 
supremely in what has proved false or rotten, can 
trust no more in anything. And every church 
to-day, liberal or non-liberal, is responsible for 
every pretension which it makes and cannot sub- 
stantiate, for ever}' hope which it arouses and can- 
not answer, for every craving for rest which it has 
encouraged only to mock and disenchant. It is 
true, the world loves for the moment to be beguiled 
and fooled. It seems even to court imposture. It 
is more than ready to listen to fair promises, and 
to believe in them again and again after the veil 
has been rudely torn from its eyes. The ^larger 
the promises and the more positive the tone, the 
readier is the religious nature to yield up its faith. 
Yet this cannot go on forever; and, when the hour 
of disenchantment finally comes, the more unques- 
tioning has been the trust, the more abject must 
needs be the despondency and despair. The relig- 
ious doubt of the day is not wholly owing to the 
difficulty of religious problems, nor to the preva- 
lence of philosophic or scientific habits of thought : 
it is owing equally to broken promises and disap- 
pointed faith. 

Again, the evil done by a false assumption of au- 
thority is not merely that it deceives those who 
trust in it, but that it blinds them to the real 
sources of spiritual authority. This is the second 



AUTHORITY I4I 

point I would make. The great wrong to the world 
which priestcraft has done and is still doing is in 
turning men's thoughts away from the one real 
spiritual authority, the truth itself, — an authority 
which the world needs to feel more and more. The 
effect upon the world of being so constantly misled 
in its search after truth, and in having put its trust 
in so many false guides, is to make it feel that 
there is no authority at all, no spiritual realities, 
no religious verities anywhere. What remains, is 
constantly asked, when all that the world once be- 
lieved in has been disproved? What remains, when 
the old idea of the Scriptures, of the Church, of 
Christ, of God himself, is so rapidly passing away? 
Nothing remains, is the reply of the ancient Church. 
Everything remains, is our reply, — everything that 
was ever there. God remains, Jesus remains, the 
Church of worshipping souls remains, the Bible 
itself, with its wealth of spiritual beauty and relig- 
ious aspiration and incentive to lofty thought, still 
remains as rich and full and precious as ever. The 
only trouble is that the world has never been taught 
to look at these things themselves, but only at sub- 
stitutes for them. It does not know what they are; 
it does not know their hidden power or their su- 
preme authority for the soul that searches them. 
They are their own authority, and the soul that 
trusts in them finds that it is resting indeed on an 
eternal rock. 

It may sound somewhat mystic to speak of the 
truth as its own authority; but take special cases, 



142 DISCOURSES 

and see how practical a fact this is. Take the 
Scriptures, for instance. So long as the Bible was 
regarded as an infallible word in the hands of an 
infallible priesthood, the real meaning of the Bible 
never dawned upon the Christian world. It was 
considered a mass of conventional and dry precepts, 
which it was proper to hold sacred, but to read or 
study which, if permitted at all, was the sheerest 
task-work. Certain texts were committed to mem- 
ory, certain consoling words were taken fondly to 
heart, certain imprecatory verses were hurled at 
the worldly-minded or the undevout; but of the 
Bible as a whole, the story it told, the poetry it 
contained, the place it held in the world's relig- 
ious life, no one dreamed. At last the time came 
when, under the searching light of modern investi- 
gation, the fiction of its infallibility was once for 
all exploded. The claims of supernatural authority 
so long made for it were proved absolutely unten- 
able. Then the Bible lost its authority, you say; 
the Bible was itself lost. On the contrary, the 
Bible was found; its authority, its meaning for the 
human soul, its message to the world, was dis- 
covered. Beneath its dry, uninviting letter was 
found a marvellous chapter of human experience. 
The world's literature was enriched by a series of 
chronicles, legends, poems, dramas, philosophies, 
treatises, hymns, songs, apocalyptic visions, un- 
guessed till then. The world's religious history 
was enriched by a picture of spiritual development, 
running through centuries of time, passing through 



AUTHORITY 143 

phase after phase of spiritual experience, advancing 
from the crudest beliefs and the grossest types of 
idolatry to nobler conceptions of Deity and the 
most exalted conceptions of worship. The world's 
moral history was enriched by a picture of human 
development, passing from the most primitive 
notions of right to the loftiest visions of duty 
and the sublimest ideal of self-sacrifice. Until the 
false notion of infallibility was cast aside, and the 
Bible was allowed to speak for itself, all this was 
hid from the Christian world. Fiction was sub- 
stituted for fact, the pretence for the reality, a 
mock authority for the supreme authority of the 
truth. Now a charm is added to those Jewish and 
Christian centuries unknown before, a depth and 
genuineness to the world's religious life unimag- 
ined till now. Such is one result of removing the 
priestly assumptions which stood between the soul 
and God's eternal truth. 

Now look at another. For many centuries not 
only the Scriptures themselves, but all the inci- 
dents of Jewish and Christian history, were wrapped 
in a haze of unreality. They were withdrawn from 
the circle of historic events and treated as an ex- 
ceptional and preternatural passage of earthly ex- 
perience, whose sanctity was supposed to rest, not 
in itself, but in its peculiar heavenly credentials. 
It was holy, not in being what it seemed, but in 
being what it did not seem. At last the persistent 
march of intellectual research, challenging these 
claims to supernatural sanctity, found them base- 



144 DISCOURSES 

less. Then, if its sacred garb was gone, Chris- 
tianity was gone, was it not? Not at all. Chris- 
tianity was found. Its veils and coverings, its 
cloaks and disguises, being removed, the thing 
itself for the first time was seen. And behold, 
the divineness which had been thought to attach to 
its coverings proved to belong to the thing itself. 
The virtue of Christianity was found to lie not in 
the halo which had surrounded it, but in the thing 
which the halo surrounded. Not the miraculous 
origin or divine attestation of Christianity, but 
Christianity, was the sacred thing. Its secret lay 
not in its being outside humanity, but in being 
within it and part of it. Its triumphs had been 
won, not through higher gifts added to it, but 
through its own truth and might. It was sufficient 
to itself. Its victories were the victories of man's 
holier nature and higher faith : they were victories 
of the human soul. Through its presence in the 
world humanity had been itself enriched, and had 
discovered its own hidden possibilities. In place 
of the fiction had been established a fact, and the 
fact was sublimer than the fiction. Christianity 
as an event in human history, as showing the com- 
manding influence of a holy soul, as revealing the 
resistless power of purity, virtue, and faith, and 
as showing how near man may come to God, speaks 
with a tone of authority with which none of the 
priestly or abnormal substitutes for Christianity 
could compare. Truth, after all, is its own au- 
thority. 



AUTHORITY I45 

What hold has Christianity upon the world 
to-day? It has not conquered the world, and is 
not conquering it. Heathen nations are not lis- 
tening to it, or are listening but reluctantly. Cor- 
ruption and vice have not disappeared before it, 
even where its power is greatest. It surely is not 
evincing any supernatural capacity to triumph over 
wickedness and wrong. Take intemperance, for in- 
stance : what preternatural or magic power does the 
Christian Church show to extinguish or diminish 
this curse? Take war, take unchastity, take mer- 
cantile dishonesty or political corruption. These 
are all as flagrant iniquities as those which per- 
vaded the Greek and Roman world when Christian- 
ity appeared, and which it was regarded a special 
proof of Divine Power in Christianity to have 
overcome. The Christian Church, if it carried 
supernatural powers in its hand (and, whatever 
powers it possessed in the past, it possesses unques- 
tionably to-day), could destroy them in an hour; yet 
it does not do it. What single problem of modern 
civilization has Christianity shown itself preternat- 
urally endowed to meet? The gulf between rich 
and poor yawns as threateningly as in the time of 
the Roman Empire. Intemperance is almost as un- 
conquerable and defiant a foe as it was twenty cen- 
turies ago. The curse of slavery was thrown off 
our land only after a bloody and demoralizing strug- 
gle whose degrading results we are just beginning 
to realize. Where is the miraculous power of 
Christianity when these evils are to be grappled 



I46 DISCOURSES 

with? "Miraculous power," I say; for that it has 
power over these evils, and is gradually conquering 
them, or helping to conquer them, through the 
silent forces of purity and integrity, not one of us 
would for a moment deny. This is the point I 
would enforce, — that the hold which Christianity 
has to-day upon the world is a natural hold, and its 
victories over evil, when it wins them, natural vic- 
tories. While we do not expect any miracles from 
it, we expect it to win its way in the world, to 
purify Christendom, and put down injustice and 
falsehood and selfishness and vice, just according to 
the moral vigor and righteous zeal which it shows. 
So much and no more. Its victories will be gained, 
not by waiting for legions of invisible spirits to 
swoop down upon its foes, but by displaying the 
unconquerable might of justice, purity, and truth. 
Therein lies its entire authority to-day: therein, 
we have no right to question (if Christianity is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever), lay its entire 
authority in the past. 

I have made little use as yet of my text; yet it 
seems to me a fitting word with which to close this 
discourse, — " He taught them as one having author- 
ity, and not as the scribes." The scribes repeated 
the phrases which they had learned or the traditions 
they had inherited; Jesus spoke out of the fulness 
of his own deep feeling and thought. No wonder 
"the people were astonished at his doctrines." 
They were not accustomed to words aflame with 
such intensity of personal faith. They were not 



AUTHORITY 147 

used to being told, "Ye have heard it said by those 
of old times, . . . An eye for an eye, and a tooth 
for a tooth; but / say unto you, Resist not evil." 
They were not used to such a glow of first-hand con- 
viction. His words carried weight because they 
were so fresh from the heart, and because of the 
truth that was in them. They carry weight to-day, 
and speak with authority, in so far as the human 
soul finds in them the message of truth which it 
needs. 

1892. 



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1 : _ 7 : : ;: t ;. : 
t.i:... 






PEACE 149 

questionably establish an era of peace, yet it would 
not be easy to show that this subject was in any 
way prominent in the early hours of Christianity, 
or was then considered especially important. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if, in any remote period of 
Christian history, this question became con- 
spicuous. Without claiming much familiarity 
with the literature of those first centuries, I doubt 
if peace was ever put forward as a leading theme, 
as though the so Is of men were yearning for its 
advent, or their minds filled with the joyous ex- 
pectation of it. Certainly, history did not justify 
any such expectation, even if it were held ; nor did 
the growth of the Christian Church by any means 
prove synonymous with peace and good will among 
the nations. On the contrary, with the progress of 
the Church arose some of the bloodiest and most 
pitiless wars which human history records. The 
feuds, the strifes, the persecutions, the slaughters 
of innocents, the martyrdoms for opinions' sake, 
which attended the advance of Romanism, consti- 
tute a gory chapter which one seldom cares to open. 
For sixteen or seventeen hundred years Christian- 
ity could show little claim to being the gospel 
of peace. And how is it with the nineteenth cen- 
tury? What protest is there among Christian 
nations to-day against the brute methods of war- 
fare? What reliance is shown upon the silent 
forces of civilization or of character? If these 
forces are held supreme, why so many wars and 
rumors of wars, why such reckless provocations of 



150 DISCOURSES 

the war-spirit, even in peaceful and industrious 
republics? What victories can be heralded to-day 
for the Prince of Peace ? 

It would not be strange, though it is perhaps 
rather an idle speculation, if the tradition of Chris- 
tianity as a gospel of peace were found to rest 
mainly, if not entirely, upon this very vision of 
olden time, this beautiful Hebrew prophecy, which 
I have quoted, and which passed in due time into a 
triumphant strain of Christmas song. Or, perhaps, 
it was Milton, author of so many other Christian 
traditions, to whose splendid stanzas, more than 
to any other source, we owe this, the fairest and 
sweetest of all our Christian dreams : — 

" No war or battle's sound was heard the world around, 

But peaceful was the night wherein the Prince of Light 
His reign of peace upon the earth began." 

Still, when all is said, the ideal is there; and 
there it insists upon remaining. This is one of 
the dreams which the human soul (or the Christian 
soul, if you will) has not suffered to grow dim; 
and in its persistency, in this irresistible charm 
it has had for the minds of men, lies a mightier 
argument for the coming reign of peace, and for 
the infinite blessings it will bestow, than any 
words could offer. Side by side with the actual 
Christianity is this ideal or possible Christianity, 
forever challenging us by its supreme beauty, for- 
ever shaming us by its silent irony. When is 



PEACE 151 

that promised hour to come? it forces us to ask; 
when are so-called Christian nations to cease their 
jealousies, their bravadoes, their insolent taunts, 
and show the first shadow of reliance upon the 
reconciling forces of reason, justice, and amity? 
For my own part, it seems to me that one ele- 
ment in this difficult problem is becoming more 
and more plain, and is sufficient justification for 
bringing forward this old and time-worn theme 
anew. I have a feeling that the question of peace 
has been kept hitherto too exclusively in the 
region of pure sentiment, that it has been handled 
too much as an abstract problem, a theme for 
pulpits and peace societies rather than for the 
every-day life of men. When we have loudly pro- 
claimed Christianity a religion of peace, when we 
have inveighed against wars, and especially against 
standing armies, when we have held international 
peace congresses, and petitioned legislatures or 
parliaments in behalf of international arbitration, 
we persuade ourselves complacently that our duty 
is done, even though all the time the incentives to 
war, the provocations to war, the creation of the 
conditions of war, go on quite as actively as before. 
We talk of arbitration: we act as though arbitra- 
tion had never been heard of. We call for peace- 
ful settlements of our flimsy quarrels in one breath : 
we appeal to the lowest and most brutal popular 
instincts in the next. Peace is an abstraction, an 
irridescent dream, a splendid strain of Christmas 
music, in no sense a real and present obligation. 



152 DISCOURSES 

This view of peace as a purely sentimental no- 
tion was first called to my notice at the time of 
our Civil War. Up to that hour the sentimental 
considerations in favor of peace and the abstract 
arguments in its behalf prevailed throughout our 
New England communities without a question or 
the shadow of a doubt. War was wicked: that 
was the beginning and end of the matter. War 
was an impossible contingency in this Western 
land, no more to be thought of or provided for than 
another geological upheaval of the American con- 
tinent. But one bright April morning we found 
ourselves faced with the question of preserving our 
national integrity, faced with the opportunity of 
crushing out with a mighty blow the curse of 
slavery; and, behold! in a second all the familiar 
pleas for peace vanished into thin air. No single 
trace of them was to be found. Ministers who had 
preached peace from the hour of their ordination, 
Quakers who had allowed no such word as war in 
their vocabulary, poets who had sung sweet praises 
of forgiveness and brotherly love till poetry seemed 
to know no other melody, all united without demur 
in summoning the nation to arms. Forthwith all 
the old arguments for peace, if brought forward or 
remembered at all, began to sound tame and das- 
tardly. They seemed like pleas for safety, or 
wailings over suffering or death, while the country 
had discovered something sublimer than bodily 
safety, something more to be dreaded than death. 
In this tremendous reaction and in the new epoch 



PEACE I : 3 

thus introduced, the thought of peace seemed 
driven once for all into the background. Having 
rested on wholly sentimental considerations, it 
found no basis for itself under the stern logic of 
facts. Peace had been discredited as an impostor: 
it must be dismissed thenceforth as an unattainable 
ideal. 

Turn now to our own times. I will not say that 
the nation has given itself over, since the Union 
armies were lisbanded, to warlike impulses. On 
the contrary, the outward signs of strife passri 
from sight with unexampled rapidity; and those 
who had had most to do with the conflict were 
foremost in denouncing the horrors of war and 
hailing the return of peace. But, " ith all this 
apparent fervor, is not the question still kept in 
the region of sentiment rather than of homely and 
every-day reality? Does it not consist of vocifera- 
tion and protest rather than of action? Does it 
not consist in summoning our neighbors tc rive 
up their mighty armies rather than in refraining 
from dee:" 5 :: - words of provocation; in calling upon 
others to be peaceful rather than in trying to be so 
ourselves ? 

To bring this matter home, ask yourselves, for 
a moment, what has chiefly endangered the p e 
of the world during the last six months? I 
"the peace ;: the world"; for :: disturb the rela- 
tions of any twc States in these iays is to imp< 
the relations :: the whole. What has endangered 
the peace of the world during the last six mo:;: 



154 DISCOURSES 

Not the standing armies of Europe, enormous 
though they are; not the dynastic jealousies of 
European States, not the personal ambition of 
European monarchs, not the desire for new territory 
or the thirst for national aggrandizement on the 
part of European empires. It has been the attitude 
of a certain North American republic in provoking 
and keeping alive petty quarrels, in nursing insig- 
nificant disputes, in fanning the flames of national 
hostility and pride, in fomenting diplomatic dis- 
trusts, in sacrificing to home and party interests the 
friendship, first of a petty South American State, 
whose grievances the faintest instinct of magna- 
nimity would have forgiven and forgotten in an 
hour, then of one of the oldest of European nations, 
to whom it was bound by every tie of common in- 
terest and inherited regard. Peace among nations, 
as among individuals, means not frothy and high- 
sounding declarations of good purpose : it means 
gentleness and kindliness of demeanor; it means 
generous judgments, mutual courtesy, absence of 
needless innuendo or affront, refraining from the 
unspoken aggravation or insult which cuts deeper 
than any overt act of hostility. Peace among 
nations, as among individuals, is always imper- 
illed where bluster and bravado are substituted 
for dignity and good manners. While these 
matters are fresh, and the dangers of war (no 
thanks to us) are for the time blown over, it is 
well for us to see how very real and practical the 
obligations of peace are; nor is there any reason to 



PEACE 155 

refrain from alluding to the matter on party grounds, 
inasmuch as each party unfortunately shows itself 
actuated by the same impulses when the danger of 
war arises, and feels itself bound to follow servilely 
the same partisan policy. It is well for us to con- 
sider that the kind of thing which we have been 
witnessing with such profound mortification in 
these recent negotiations is likely to take place 
whenever our own government comes into conflict 
with others, or any great problems of international 
interest come before us for solution. The claims 
of judicial fairness, the requirements of interna- 
tional courtesy, the rules of diplomatic etiquette, 
the obligations of good breeding, the name we are 
to win among the nations of the earth, are all to 
be forgotten under the imperious necessity of 
pandering to popular prejudices and winning party 
votes. How far can this be carried? it is interest- 
ing to ask. How long will the world suffer the 
presence of any single State, however powerful, 
which deliberately subordinates all questions of 
general concern to the exigencies of domestic 
policy? And what destructive instrument could 
civilization possibly invent more dangerous to the 
world's peace than this very disposition on the part 
of any one nation to make capital for itself out of 
all public questions? What is the peace of the 
world worth in the presence of these ignoble ne- 
cessities? 

Evidently, peace is no mere matter of sentiment, 
to be disposed of in a few splendid generalities. 



156 DISCOURSES 

To picture to ourselves the dove soaring over all 
lands, and enchanting men's souls by its gentle- 
ness and beauty, to talk of the lion lying down 
with the lamb, or sing of the time when "they 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their 
spears into pruning-hooks, when nation shall no 
longer lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more," — to hold up these high 
ideals, which we know human nature cannot possi- 
bly attain, is not all that is required of us. What 
we need is ideals which human nature can attain. 
What we need is the actual avoidance of those 
things which make for war. This trifling with a 
great principle, this cool indifference to all other 
consequences, so long as our private interests are 
served, this airy balancing upon the brink of war, as 
though war was a very trivial affair, and as though 
the crushing out of a weaker people or the mutual 
crippling of two powerful ones were quite the 
proper way of disposing of a paltry grievance, 
ought to be stamped as the gross offence which it 
is. What is the use of our Christian principles, 
what is the meaning of our boasted Christian civil- 
ization, if a chance affront from a sister province, 
rent by internal feuds and struggling apparently 
for greater liberty, or if the protection of a lucra- 
tive industry, can only be settled by angry words, 
and the hasty fitting out of havoc-spreading navies? 
If the danger was purely fictitious, then the situa- 
tion was ludicrous ; if it was real, then it was an 
iniquitous playing with bloody instruments, which 



PEACE 157 

should be used only as the last dread resort. 
What is the good in being strong, if it does not 
enable us to be forbearing or magnanimous toward 
the weak? What good in a giant's strength, if we 
must needs use it with the tyranny and malignity 
of a giant ? If war is a bad thing, then this brag- 
gart policy, which may at any moment end in war, 
is a flagrant wrong to humanity. And war is a 
bad thing. War is one of the direst calamities to 
which civilization can be subjected. Even we 
who know so little of its woes, and to whom when 
it came, a generation ago, it came to arouse certain 
noble sentiments which had long been sleeping, 
and to stir us to the service of a holy cause, are 
feeling more and more its corrupting and insidious 
effects. Even to us it has bequeathed a mourn- 
ful legacy of extravagance and crime. Its horrors 
cannot be exaggerated. It has no place in modern 
civilization. It should be held by all intelligent 
or right-minded nations as the last resort, to be 
appealed to only when other arguments and recon- 
ciliations are exhausted, not as an easy mode of 
vengeance, to be vented upon the slightest oppor- 
tunity. 

Peace, then, means something. It means some- 
thing more than fine sentiment or sonorous gen- 
eralities. It means the readiness to abide by the 
decisions of reason and common sense, instead of 
brute force. It means a disposition to avoid 
unnecessary causes of hostility. It means mutual 
courtesy. It means firm insistence upon one's 



158 DISCOURSES 

own rights, but the recognition at the same time 
of others' rights, and straightforward readiness to 
respect them. Ten times more effective in the 
cause of peace than all the courts of arbitration 
which we can ever call together would be the spec- 
tacle of a great nation refusing, in its consciousness 
of strength, to be irritated by petty grievances, 
turning a deaf ear to the howlings of popular 
prejudice, and asking at the hand of sister nations, 
not sharp advantages, but only justice and right. 
Without this disposition, arbitration is neutralized 
and made ridiculous and inoperative at the start. 
With it, it becomes the virtual rooting out of 
war. 

I would not seem to argue that for a nation 
like ours there can be no justifiable cause of war, 
or that we should announce to the world that we 
shall never resort to that extremity. This would 
be falling into the very error against which I 
have been discoursing. It is these impracticable 
demands in behalf of peace, these fantastic claims 
upon human nature, this making of peace a vi- 
sionary and sentimental conception rather than a 
practical and attainable affair, that I have been 
denouncing. The question for us to-day is not 
whether we will engage in a Quixotic campaign 
against war in the abstract, or in behalf of an im- 
possibly amiable and forgiving public policy; it is 
whether we, as a nation, will refrain from certain 
very needlessly offensive and aggressive acts, and 
do certain very obviously temperate and considerate 



PEACE 



159 



ones. When the hour for real resistance comes, 
the blow for justice or truth will be none the less 
effectively struck because we have suffered no slight 
cause to disturb us, and none but the grossest 
offence to awaken our wrath. In point of fact, 
there is no great nation in existence to-day which 
has fewer temptations to war or less right to talk 
about it or think of it than we. Our neighbors on 
this continent are not strong enough to give us a 
moment's anxiety; the nations across the seas are 
too far away, and too much engrossed in their own 
concerns to willingly disturb us. There is no 
reason why this nation should not be the perpetual 
home of peace, and thereby further the cause of 
peace among all the nations of the earth, — a nobler 
function, certainly, than that of browbeating our 
neighbors and becoming the mischief-maker of a 
continent. The peace of the world is advanced 
whenever any single nation follows scrupulously 
the arts of peace, and proves it possible to save 
itself all the burdens and the demoralizations of 
war. It is not "beating our swords into plough- 
shares and our spears into pruning-hooks " that is 
asked of us ; it is merely keeping out of quarrels, 
and trusting to justice and generosity rather than 
to craft for securing our rights. 

Is this asking too much? If it is, then we may 
well dismiss those old-time prophecies and fine- 
sounding phrases as romantic illusions. If it is 
not, then it is time, indeed, that some one nation 
of modern times initiated the reform ; and, if any, 



l60 DISCOURSES 

why not we ? What less can the world demand of 
us in our safe seclusion beyond the seas? 

Let us by all means be true to this claim. Let 
it not be our fault if the prediction of the old 
Jewish prophet fail longer of its fulfilment, or if 
Christianity be not at last faithful to its promise, 
and bring about "peace on earth, good will toward 
men." 

1892. 



XIII. 
THE DREAM AND THE REALITY. 

AN EASTER SERMON. 

" Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but is 
risen." — Luke xxiv. 5, 6. 

One of the most interesting results of recent 
Bible study is in bringing the incidents of this 
momentous period of early Christian history into 
their true relation and perspective. What was 
before a somewhat confused mass of impressions 
and traditions is made now, simply by a proper 
chronological arrangement, to show the successive 
stages by which the belief of the early Church in 
the Resurrection was formed. 

The witnesses of those hours are, as you know, 
first Paul, whose writings are by far the oldest 
which remain, and reflect therefore the earliest 
beliefs; then the four Gospels, which reflect the 
ideas and traditions of a generation or two later. 
Let us follow the accounts, then, in this order. 

Paul's belief in the resurrection of Jesus was of 
the most positive kind, and underlies the whole 
structure of his Christian faith. "If Christ be not 
risen," he declares, "then is our preaching vain, 



l62 DISCOURSES 

and your faith is also vain." And the evidence on 
which this belief rests, he tells us, too, without 
reserve. "Christ was seen," he says, "of Cephas, 
then of the twelve : after that of above five hundred 
brethren at once; . . . after that he was seen of 
James; then of all the apostles. And last of all 
he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due 
time." That Paul himself actually saw the risen 
Jesus face to face no one understands him here to 
say, as there is no reason to suppose that he was in 
Jerusalem or Galilee at that time, or was acquainted 
with the new gospel and its disciples till some 
time afterward. If this is so, then he must refer 
here, of course, not to the bodily sight of Jesus, but 
to some visionary appearance of the Lord long after 
the crucifixion; as he says, "as to one born out of 
due time." The common opinion is, I think, that 
Paul has in mind here his vision at Damascus, 
where, according to the narrative in Acts, "there 
suddenly shined round about him a light from 
heaven; and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice 
saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
me? I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." Either 
this or some similar visionary appearance it must 
have been on which Paul bases his belief in the 
risen Lord. And whatever was true of his own 
experience must have been true, also, of those of the 
other witnesses whom he cites; as the words which 
he uses to describe them are exactly the same, and 
because, if the evidence in those cases were of a 
more material or tangible kind than in his own, he 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 1 63 

would naturally have brought it forward to con- 
vince the Corinthians, whose doubts he was en- 
deavoring in this passage to overcome. If asked 
how the mere appearance of Jesus in a vision could 
have impressed Paul so profoundly and convinced 
him that Christ had risen from the dead, we must 
remember that Paul attached the utmost importance 
to these abnormal experiences, and refers to them 
more than once as the sources of his highest revela- 
tions. "I will come to visions and revelations of 
the Lord," he says to the Corinthians on another 
occasion. "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen 
years ago (whether in the body or out of the body 
I cannot tell: God knoweth); such an one caught 
up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man 
(whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot 
tell : God knoweth); how that he was caught up into 
paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is 
not lawful for a man to utter." Evidently, these 
trances, coming in hours of nervous excitement or 
great spiritual exaltation, were to him, living as he 
did in days when all nervous phenomena were 
counted demonic, and all visions tokens of divine 
visitation, more convincing than any words from 
human lips could possibly be. It was through 
them, indeed, that he gained, as he said, his whole 
knowledge of the gospel, disclaiming any instruc- 
tion on this point from the older disciples, and 
refusing, with much spirit, to acknowledge any 
superiority on their part because they had "seen 
the Lord," and he had not. "I certify to you, 



164 DISCOURSES 

brethren," he says to the Galatians, "that the gos- 
pel which was preached of me is not after man. 
For I neither received it of man, neither was I 
taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ." We 
must remember, too, that the idea of death then 
prevailing among the Jews was wholly different 
from ours, and that all who were laid to rest in the 
grave were supposed to remain in the lower regions 
till summoned to appear before the Lord for judg- 
ment. From the grave no one could appear on 
earth. For Jesus, therefore, to appear, in vision- 
ary form, as a spiritual apparition, was proof that 
he had escaped the grave. He had suffered no 
death at all, but was already in heavenly regions, 
at the right hand of God, waiting to reappear and 
establish his kingdom, and disclosing himself to 
his chosen ones from time to time to arouse or 
strengthen their faith. Singular as this idea 
seems to us, and irreconcilable as it is with our 
more modern conceptions of the universe and of 
heaven, we can see what mighty hold it had upon 
Paul, and also to what a purely spiritual appear- 
ance of the risen Jesus, objectively real to him 
who saw it, but in no sense bodily existent, it 
points. So far as we can judge, this was the only 
idea which those who lived in the first generation 
after Jesus' death could have attached to the term 
"resurrection." 

But months and years passed on; the eager hopes 
and confident expectations of the Messiah's reap- 
pearance were slowly and reluctantly surrendered, 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 1 65 

and the desire arose to collect and preserve the 
records of that earthly career which they had sup- 
posed till then was to be merely the brief anticipa- 
tion of a more splendid and enduring reign. 
Among the records thus collected, the accounts 
of the death and resurrection of Jesus assumed a 
wholly different form from that which we have 
found in the Epistles of Paul. Instead of that 
vision of the Lord, we hear now of a bodily reap- 
pearance and of strange physical phenomena, which 
grow in significance and in detail as we pass from 
the original Mark to the later Gospels. We read 
of an angel descending from heaven and rolling 
back the stone from the sepulchre; we read of the 
disciples hastening to the place to find the grave 
deserted; we read of the appearance of the risen 
Lord among his disciples, and of his walking with 
them by the way, and "expounding to them the 
Scriptures;" we read of his coming among his 
disciples, and saying, "Behold my hands and feet, 
that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit 
hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have;" we 
read of his bidding Thomas thrust his hand into 
his side, into the "print of the nails," and of his 
eating with them "a piece of broiled fish, and of 
an honeycomb." 

I bring these incidents before you now, you will 
understand, not merely to discuss their historical 
accuracy, but also as revealing an exceedingly inter- 
esting chapter of the spiritual life of that time, as 
well as of the growth of beliefs, which would 



1 66 DISCOURSES 

otherwise be quite hidden. That Jesus could not 
really have died was a matter of course to the early 
disciples, else he could not have been the Messiah 
they had supposed him. But the proofs of this 
fact are, as we have seen, at first purely spiritual. 
They see him in their dreams; they hear his voice 
in moments of high religious excitement; they are 
crushed to the earth by his stern rebuke, as he bids 
them cease persecuting him, and shows them how 
hard it is "to kick against the pricks." Whole 
multitudes are infected with the excitement, and 
as on the day of Pentecost "hear a sound from 
heaven as of a rushing wind, which filled the house 
where they were sitting. And there appeared unto 
them cloven tongues, like as of fire," palpable 
tokens to them all that he on whom their thoughts 
were set had been present in the midst of them. 
As time passed on, this belief grew in intensity 
and in circumstance. The vague visionary appear- 
ance took on a more material and literal form; 
evidence was gathered on every hand of bodily 
manifestations to one and another and another; the 
one day of his stay upon earth, as at first recorded, 
was extended by degrees to forty, and finally to the 
other incidents of this stay was added that, "while 
they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received 
him out of their sight." So completely had this 
thought possessed them, so manifold were the sup- 
posed proofs which it could finally marshal in its 
behalf, so absolutely filled and controlled were 
these first generations of Christians with the belief 
in their risen Lord. 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY l6j 

And, as in all such phenomena, the interesting 
thing to us is not so much the special form of the 
belief as the belief itself. What a hold must Jesus 
have gained upon his followers, how must the force 
of his personality have impressed them, how must 
the moral and spiritual quality of his life have 
asserted itself, to have surmounted thus the igno- 
miny of his crucifixion and the tremendous revulsion 
in all their expectations and ideas caused by his 
death! Place yourselves for a moment among the 
scattered disciples, as they come together after the 
horrors of the crucifixion, which they had not ven- 
tured to witness; remember how confidently they 
had just before been beseeching him to give them 
seats "at the right hand and the left in his king- 
dom " ; think what to them, therefore, the crucifix- 
ion must have meant; realize, if you can, their 
emotions as he, to whom they had given their entire 
confidence and whom they had followed implicitly 
month after month, had thus shattered all their 
trusts in an hour; consider what a hopeless future 
lay before his disciples; consider, in a word, all 
that is implied in the pathetic words which came 
from two of the disciples on the day after the cruci- 
fixion, — "We trusted that it had been he who 
should have redeemed Israel," — and you will un- 
derstand the mighty crisis of that hour. You will 
see what their love for him and their faith in him 
must have been to have led them, although he had 
apparently died, to believe that he was still alive, 
and would somehow come again to carry on his 



168 DISCOURSES 

interrupted work. Fortunately for the world, their 
faith prevailed, defeat was turned into victory, and 
life triumphed over death. Jesus lived on in the 
truths he had spoken and the deeds he had done, 
though in so different a way than they had thought. 
And this is the second point which our subject 
suggests, — in how much higher a way than they 
imagined, or could possibly understand, the hopes 
of that hour were fulfilled. It has been often said 
of certain modern inventions, especially the uses 
of steam for locomotion, that, if the expectation of 
the inventors had been simply answered, the result 
would have been little better than a failure. It is 
only because the triumphs of steam have so infi- 
nitely transcended all possible prophecies of their 
originators, the opportunities of travel having so 
vastly increased the habit of travel, that the world 
has been so vastly the gainer. It is something of 
the same kind that occurs to one as he recalls the 
pathetic faith and trusts of those early Christian 
hours. Had those expectations, and nothing more, 
been fulfilled, where would have been the world's 
religious faith to-day? Had the resurrection 
proved to mean simply, as was then thought, the 
escape of the Messiah from the grave to establish 
his kingdom on earth; if the heavenly kingdom 
meant, as the Book of Revelation represents it, 
simply a thousand years' triumph of the true be- 
lievers over their foes, while "whosoever was not 
found written in the book of life was cast into the 
lake of fire"; if immortality meant simply, as 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 169 

Paul's Epistles intimate, that "they that are 
Christ's " should pass unharmed through the grave, 
and put on an incorruptible body, — our rejoicings 
to-day would certainly be very different from what 
they are. It is because those expectations have 
been so much more than fulfilled, it is because 
those dreams have been so much more than real- 
ized, it is because the words "life," "eternity," 
"heaven," "immortality," bear to our minds so 
much richer a meaning than could then be possibly 
conceived, that these Easter hours strike for us 
a note of such lofty triumph. Those faiths are 
grand, not in what they then promised, but in what 
they have since become. Compare the Jesus rising 
from the sepulchre to seat himself upon a throne, 
the utmost limit of whose sway was to be a petty 
thousand years, with the actual Jesus, who has 
entered into the hearts of countless generations, 
and who has identified his name with the civiliza- 
tion of eighteen centuries; compare the life of 
those distant days with the life of to-day, so com- 
plex in its aims, so manifold in its opportunities, 
so vast in its sympathies, its aspirations, and its 
hopes; compare the universe of Jewish thought, 
"the heavens and earth kept reserved unto fire 
against the day of judgment and perdition of un- 
godly men," reserved unto the day of the Lord, 
which was to "come as a thief in the night; in the 
which the heavens shall pass away with a great 
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent 
heat, the earth also and the works that are therein 



170 DISCOURSES 

shall be burned up," with the universe which sci- 
ence has revealed to us to-day; compare the "new 
heaven and the new earth " of the apocalyptic 
dream, "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband," the city which "lieth 
four square, whose length was as great as its 
breadth," and which "measured with the reed 
twelve thousand furlongs," with the dreams of 
heaven which fill the souls of earnest men or 
women to-day, — and it will be clear that our cause 
of rejoicing now is, not that the beliefs of those 
early days proved literally true, but rather that 
they have led on to truths incomparably greater, in 
which the original faith has been submerged and 
has disappeared. 

Christianity, too, — one cannot but think what 
a slight affair that would have been, had it simply 
accomplished the purposes or fulfilled the career 
which those first disciples had marked out for it. 
What conception could they possibly have formed 
of the regions it was to conquer, the centuries it 
was to survive, the new thoughts it was to arouse, 
the doctrines it was to develop, the imaginations 
it was to stir, the sects it was to create, the start- 
ling truths it was to promulgate, the arts and phi- 
losophies and sciences and philanthropies it was to 
bestow upon the world? Christianity is what it is 
to-day, not because it has answered the dreams of 
its founders, but because it has so infinitely tran- 
scended them, because it had moral forces at its 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 171 

command of which they did not dream, because it 
carried in its bosom unspoken truths which only 
the world's growing spiritual needs could bring to 
utterance. It is pathetic, when we think of the 
message which Christianity has to deliver to the 
world, to read the addresses with which the first 
Christian preachers commended their faith or the 
claims which they made in its behalf. How little 
Peter and James and John and Paul, if we are to 
judge from their discourses in the Book of Acts, 
could have guessed of the truth committed to their 
hands, or of the consequences which were to flow 
from that gentle and holy life! Not so much that 
their vision was at fault as that the divine achieve- 
ment always so far outruns the human expectation. 
Is not the same thing eminently true of immor- 
tality itself, which is sometimes made to rest so 
exclusively upon the events and beliefs of those 
far-off days? Is it because those things have 
proved true, or because things of infinitely higher 
moment have since proved true, that we trust 
to-day in immortality? Give us simply the facts 
and beliefs of that first generation, and where 
should we be? Since those hours Christ has 
gained many mightier victories over death than 
any then recorded, the stones have been rolled 
from many another sepulchre of ignorance and 
despair, the spiritual forces of humanity have won 
many a notable triumph unheard of then; and it is 
on these added proofs of the soul's power, these 
tokens of an immortal quality in Christianity, in 



172 . DISCOURSES 

truth, in human goodness and heroism and faith, 
that the real hope of immortality now rests. Noth- 
ing could express better this contrast of which I 
speak than the comparison between the words in 
vogue for the same thought then and now. Their 
word was "resurrection": ours is "immortality." 
Half a dozen times, perhaps, in the Epistles, do 
we find the term "immortality"; elsewhere, 
through Epistles and Gospels alike, we hear 
only of the "resurrection." Their thoughts dwelt 
mainly on the mere rising from the grave, and the 
''body with which they came," ours upon the 
larger life upon which the soul enters; theirs 
upon a future state which had its epochs and its 
limits, ours upon a life which is to be eternal ; 
theirs upon a single, sublime instance of victory 
over death, ours upon certain essential qualities of 
soul too pure or fine for death to reach. It is not 
too much to say that all which makes the thought 
of immortality precious to us to-day, or the assur- 
ance of it strong, has come through the deepening 
spiritual consciousness of these later Christian 
centuries. 

And, if this has been true in the past, why may 
it not be true in the future as well, and our fairest 
dreams of immortality to-day prove but a faint 
prophecy of the divine reality? The many years 
which have gone by since those Scripture narra- 
tives were written have brought no positive cer- 
tainty with them. The questions which were 
asked then are asked still, and a thousand others 



THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 1 73 

which no one thought then of are waiting yet for 
their answer. The doubts which perplexed the 
Corinthians in Paul's time perplex many souls 
to-day, and many a doubt more searching and dar- 
ing and agonizing than had ever beset the Corinth- 
ian or Athenian mind. Each generation, while it 
has a firmer hold, on the whole, upon moral cer- 
tainties, and a deeper faith in spiritual realities, 
yet peers into the future with the same hopeless 
and baffled gaze. What is to be said, then, to 
these questioners, or what promise are we justified 
in holding out, when so many promises have been 
mocked? This, at least the best message which 
these hours bring, and the best, after all, that they 
could possibly bring, — that, if the future life is 
not exactly what we dream, it is only because it is 
to be something nobler and better; that, if our 
dreams are not to be fulfilled, it is only because 
the reality so far outstrips our utmost thought. If 
the life eternal offers problems which our wisdom 
cannot solve, it is because "eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him." 

1892. 



XIV. 
INHERITANCES. 

" By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin : and so 
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." — Rom. v. 12. 

This old doctrine that the sins of the fathers are 
visited upon their children has had a long and 
strange life. Beginning with the Jewish idea of 
a God who "visits the iniquity of the fathers upon 
the children unto the third and fourth generation of 
them that hate him," it reappeared in Christian 
theology in the doctrine of the imputation of 
Adam's sin, which has held its place undisturbed 
till the present day. And now, just as the world 
seems to have outgrown at last this cruel belief, 
and is beginning to realize that each individual is 
responsible for his own offences alone, spring up 
the new scientific notions of to-day, to give the 
old belief a new lease of life. If, indeed, these 
family types of character, as of face, persist from 
generation to generation; if we inherit our instincts 
and passions from a remote past; if our ancestors 
of ages back live in us to-day, determining our 
impulses, controlling our tastes, governing our de- 
sires, — how much better off are we, after all, than 
under the old Calvinistic dogmas? In this order 



INHERITANCES 1 75 

of things, what becomes of divine justice or of per- 
sonal responsibility? Who and what am I, if these 
affections and propensities which I call my own are 
simply what remains of a thousand other lives spent 
before me, with which I had nothing to do? What 
moral obligation can rest upon such a being as 
that ? Or what idea can he have of God ? 

If these are questions which you ever find your- 
selves asking (as some certainly do), let me sug- 
gest first that, taken at its worst, this modern 
conception is somewhat better than that which it 
superseded. There is some gain, assuredly, in 
seeing the management of the universe transferred 
from the hands of an arbitrary monarch, who gov- 
erned simply for his own pleasure and glory, to the 
keeping of natural laws, which, however rigid and 
stern they may seem, are absolutely impartial, and 
which we can all study and understand. As be- 
tween the implacable Deity of an earlier faith, 
demanding the satisfaction of his own rights at no 
matter what cost of human suffering, and this uni- 
verse of law in which the human race, with ages at 
its disposal, is working out its own salvation (even 
though this were all), it is certainly not difficult 
to choose. 

But, to view the question more fairly, we must 
try for a moment to take in the wider field of 
human destiny which now opens before us. Once, 
as you know, a few thousand years were supposed to 
cover the entire past of man's existence upon the 
earth. The whole drama of human destiny lay be- 



176 DISCOURSES 

tween the leaves of a single book, and almost 
within the experiences of a single nation. The 
question of divine justice meant God's dealings with 
a people whom he had just called into being, as it 
were, and whose final exit from the scene might 
occur at any moment. Quite different from this, it 
must be acknowledged, is the present picture of 
man's earthly life. As he emerges upon the field of 
history, centuries back, he is not beginning, he 
is already midway in his career. Behind him are 
countless ages of growth, none the less real because 
unrecorded. The shell-heaps and gravel deposits 
of our own continent reveal the continuous exist- 
ence of man in North America for at least one 
hundred and fifty thousand years, while in the 
eastern hemisphere he is supposed to have ap- 
peared much earlier still. We have grown quite 
accustomed to these mighty stretches of time as 
geological facts; but have we ever duly considered 
their bearing upon man's moral and social develop- 
ment? Have we considered what it means that 
fifteen hundred centuries were needed to bring man 
even into the barbaric condition in which the 
world's earliest records find him? One of the 
most striking results of modern investigation has 
been to trace out certain successive stages of cult- 
ure through which man must have passed before 
becoming in any sense a civilized being. From 
the time when he existed upon fruit and nuts up 
to the time of his earliest and crudest written 
records, great changes had occurred, and grand 



INHERITANCES 1 77 

phases of development had succeeded each other. 
Leaving behind him the epoch when fish was his 
choicest food and the bow and arrow his mightiest 
weapon, he had entered upon a long and brilliant 
career, marked by the manufacture of pottery, the 
domestication of various animals, and the smelting 
of iron for his tools. He had ceased to be a sav- 
age, he had become a barbarian; the period of the 
barbarian being as far removed from that of the 
savage as our modern epoch of steam and electric- 
ity from the times of the crusades or of feudalism. 
Now go back, for a moment, seventy-five thou- 
sand or one hundred thousand years, to the time 
when man first cooked his food in clay vessels or 
domesticated animals for his service and collected 
flocks or herds. What does this signify? It 
means, of course, that he had had time to become 
tired of his fruit and nuts, and to learn to shoot 
game and catch fish and cook them with fire, many 
centuries, perhaps, being required for each of these 
upward steps toward civilization. But does it not 
mean something morally and socially also? Does 
it not mean the gradual acquisition of private 
property and gradual formation of what might be 
called family life? Does it not mean, at least, the 
birth of those tender affections, the beginning of 
those sacred ties, the consciousness of those pecul- 
iar responsibilities and confidences and obligations 
which centre in the thought of home? And does 
not this, little though it be, signify a great deal 
when compared with the savage existence behind 



I78 DISCOURSES 

him? Was it not worth those untold ages of sav- 
agery simply to have secured so much ? The race 
had not yet entered upon its career of civilization, 
but this beginning had been made. 

Now, I am not asking vou, in this survev of 
the past, to leave our religious themes, simply to 
dabble in science: I am only trying to secure the 
background against which, and only against which, 
as it seems to me, we can understand God's deal- 
ings with us to-day. I am only asking you to 
remember how long it took for man to become 
what we find him when history begins. Those 
prehistoric centuries must be accounted for. 
There they are. What was man doing all that 
time? for empty centuries, vacant ages, are unsup- 
posable. Man was learning, it seems, to make his 
fire and cook his food, to string his bow and bake 
his clay, to irrigate his fields and turn animals into 
companions and slaves, to fashion his iron ore and 
scratch his name upon the rocks. He was learning,; 
also, — was he not? — to gather his children and 
herds around him, to learn the primitive laws of 
mine and thine, to feel the dawning sentiments of 
loyalty and honor, to form some notion of Deity, 
to catch some distant glimpses, it may be, of purity 
and gentleness and truth. A splendid basis, after 
all, on which after-centuries are to build! 

And from this glance at the past come to my 
mind two important reflections. First comes the 
thought of the littleness of our historic period as 
compared with the entire time during which man 



INHERITANCES 1 79 

has been on earth. What are these petty two thou- 
sand, four thousand, six thousand years of recorded 
time, as against the thousand centuries since man 
first became conscious of his difference from the 
brutes, and entered upon that fashioning of mind 
and heart and soul in which he is still so busily 
employed to-day? How much mightier and diviner 
a scheme is here than our fathers had ever dreamed, 
— a scheme which needs not years, but ages, for 
its fulfilment, a scheme which involves not the 
establishment of a single chosen race or a single 
chosen religion, not the achievement of your per- 
sonal happiness or mine, or the vindication of our 
personal rights, but nothing less than the unfolding 
of human character, the creation of soul, the devel- 
opment of man! 

Man, I say (for this is my second thought), not 
men, — man, an abstraction, as we commonly view 
it, a shadow, yet here the supreme reality. What 
possibility for any such scheme of the ages as this, 
if there had been only one individual upon the 
stage at once, each dying always as soon as his suc- 
cessor was born? What possibility for these high 
ends to be achieved save through the companion- 
ship of man with man, and the succession of gener- 
ation after generation; save through the mutual 
play of affection, the mutual conflicts of rights and 
needs, the mutual exchange of thought and emo- 
tion, the mutual exercise of support and defence, 
of self-assertion and surrender, of stimulus and 
rivalry, which only a multitude affords? Plainly, 



180 DISCOURSES 

what is needed for all these nobler ends of exist- 
ence is not the individual alone: it is the race, — 
many individuals, many families, many tribes, 
many nations, many faiths. Plainly, the purpose 
of history, the outcome of the centuries, the di- 
vine intent of creation, can be rightly read only 
as individual men are lost in the larger thought of 
man. Nor does this lessen the worth of the indi- 
vidual; for it is in individual men that the race 
from time to time culminates, and from individual 
lives that the masses of humanity are all the time 
taking their inspiration and their fresh start into 
new eras of growth. Nor does it involve the sacri- 
fice of the individual to the race. Rather, it means 
— and it does mean this — that the individual finds 
himself out only in his relations with the race; 
that he comes to his full consciousness only as part 
of a greater whole, only as one among many breth- 
ren. For a divine scheme, nothing less than an 
entire race will suffice. Little are these lives of 
ours, if we claim them for ourselves alone, if we 
are not willing to lend them to the higher service, 
the full completeness of the race. 

We are here on earth, then, not for our own 
sake, but for humanity's sake, not for these brief 
lives of an hour, but for this life of ages. And 
this life of the ages, this continuity of the race, to 
take a step further, is possible on one condition 
only, — that the laws of yesterday shall be the laws 
of to-day, that cause and effect shall be bound to 
each other through all the ages by a necessity 



INHERITANCES l8l 

which knows no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning. It is the fashion to decry the idea of 
absolute and unchanging law, as if incompatible 
with the idea of a divine government of the uni- 
verse, and as converting men into machines. Yet 
what higher conception of the Divine can we form, 
after all, than lies in this very idea of a wisdom 
and love so absolute as to need no change and 
admit of no improvement through time or eternity, 
or what higher thought of man than this very 
thought of a being relying upon eternal and irre- 
versible laws to aid him in every step of his 
growth? How else, indeed, could humanity have 
reached the point where it stands to-day, or could 
those ages of prehistoric life have achieved their 
results, or could they have any story to tell? We 
chafe and fret against this stern necessity, and 
resent the thought that every deed is bound to its 
inevitable, far-reaching consequence. We cannot 
escape this thraldom, we exclaim. We are slaves; 
we are servants of necessity. But suppose that 
our fathers could have escaped this thraldom, and 
had done so; suppose that this narrower idea of 
divine justice had prevailed, and the consequences 
of men's acts had been set aside at every call for 
mercy, — where, then, would be our boasted civiliza- 
tion, our progress in goodness or purity or truth ? 
When would our savage ancestor have learned the 
uses of fire or of the bow or of iron, had nature's 
laws held for to-day alone, to be broken to-morrow? 
How could the chieftain have learned the virtue of 



1 82 DISCOURSES 

temperance and self-control, the father the beauty 
of tenderness and fidelity, or society the value of 
purity and constancy and truth, had not man's 
obedience to these laws led always to strength and 
power, disobedience always to weakness and inward 
decay? Where else than in this inevitable, piti- 
less linking of cause with effect, all the world 
over and all the ages through, could we find the 
thread which connects this growing civilization; 
could we find the continuity of the race, the unity 
in all this multiplicity? 

We stand here face to face with one of life's 
sternest problems. As a rule, we feel only its 
hardness and what we deem its injustice. All 
around us we see the victims of others' weakness 
or thoughtlessness or iniquity. "The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set 
on edge." The fathers have violated the laws of 
health, and the children are victims of disease. 
The fathers have squandered their estate, and the 
children are struggling with poverty and hunger. 
The father or grandfather has indulged his appetite 
for drink, and the son or grandson has had to fight 
for his life against a mysterious and consuming 
thirst. The father has become the creature of 
violence or lust, and the child struggles wearily 
and almost vainly for honesty or purity. You shud- 
der at the pitilessness and inevitableness of these 
cruel laws. But you forget that there are two 
sides to the picture. Evil lasts from generation 
to generation; but does not good as well? Were 



INHERITANCES 1 83 

it not for his ancestors, this youth would not have 
been the slave of his passions; but of what pure 
or generous instinct, in that case, would he have 
been the possessor? But for them evil would not 
be so fatally easy; but would unselfish or upright 
deeds have been even possible? What years of 
self-control, what generations of struggle, what 
ages of conflict and defeat and victory, lie behind 
every fine instinct or noble aspiration of his heart? 
Is it the ancestor in him that makes vice and gross- 
ness so attractive to him? But what is it that 
opens his soul to beauty, and makes him so sensi- 
tive to nature or to art? From what centuries of 
culture, what generations of training for eye or ear, 
what lifetimes of loving servitude to beauty, is he 
drawing, when he stands rapt before the artist's 
handiwork, or as a strain of music thrills him to 
the soul? His ancestor lives in him? Yes, fort- 
unately for him. Else little enough of manhood 
were there, little enough of love of beauty or 
truth, little enough of the spiritual momentum by 
which alone wrong and evil can be swept away, 
little enough of the accumulating force of virtue 
before which sin hides itself and disappears. 
Would you have the good, and escape all the evil? 
claim all the blessings of this law, and elude all its 
hardships? Could you, if you would? Are they 
not one and the same? Are they not the working 
out of the same eternal law? Are they not marks 
of the same divine justice, — a justice somewhat 
larger and more just than your little dream, a jus- 



1 84 DISCOURSES 

tice which is displaying itself on a larger stage, 
a justice which needs not to be balanced by mercy, 
but which is itself mercy? What, to our thought, 
are two, in this diviner scheme become one. 

But what is left of the individual, after all, in 
this grand process of the ages? What becomes of 
you or me ? What remains of our personality, still 
more of our moral responsibility? Are we anything 
but atoms in this immensity, with no duty but to 
recognize ourselves as part of a greater whole? 

Well, let us see. Has it been so in the past? 
Was Paul, who wrote the words which I am 
using, a mere atom? or Plato? or Alexander? or 
Luther? or Newton? Does not the world feel 
their lives to-day in its every fibre? Have you 
known a single earnest soul, in these times or 
in the past, of which this was not in a measure 
true ? What sources of courage and inspiration do 
single lives become! what reservoirs of power, 
what leaders of the race into larger activities! 
The divine scheme works itself out through human 
actors. The first man to draw a bow, to build a 
hut, to sail the ocean, to sing his song, — to what 
grand results did he open the way! And, as for 
great souls, so for small. No deed without its 
result, no thought or act, no struggle or endeavor, 
without its effect. You cannot get away from 
that; and in that lies the moral of the whole. The 
only trouble is that the order of things is larger 
than you think. You work out your little scheme 
of justice, of which your personal life is the centre, 



INHERITANCES 1 85 

and your threescore years and ten the entire period; 
and, only when it is caught up into a mightier plan, 
with more comprehensive laws and remoter conse- 
quences, does it appear in its true proportions. The 
danger is not that you will think too much of your 
personal responsibility, but that you will think too 
little, that you will not realize the train of conse- 
quences which each act or word will set in motion, 
or the varied influences which every life must 
exert upon those about it. We think of these in- 
exorable laws as holding us in their grasp rather 
than as the means whereby we may act upon others. 
In point of fact, they help us at every turn. This 
thraldom which binds us to the consequences of 
our fathers' deeds is the very thing which enables 
us to make other lives brighter or happier or better. 
It sends our little effort forth on errands of wide 
beneficence. It takes the generous thought or 
friendly word which otherwise would die in its own 
performance, and makes it a living messenger of 
love and good will. As members of the race, as 
enchained by these necessities of mutual influence, 
we cannot live for ourselves alone if we would. 
By the powers which inhere in every earnest per- 
sonality, and by the mysterious laws of heredity 
which make the father live again in the son, our 
own lives are multiplied and perpetuated, and the 
means are offered us of acting upon the world by 
a thousand channels not of our own making or 
choosing. 

So, when all is said, the one question for each of 



1 86 DISCOURSES 

us to answer is, Do you think the race exists for 
you, or that you exist for the race? Have the ages 
come and gone, these laws been established, and 
these divine purposes put in play, for your conven- 
ience and pleasure; or are you here that this great 
scheme of things may be a little more perfect, and 
some lives a little better or happier, for your pres- 
ence? If the latter, then many pains and sorrows 
which would otherwise be insufferable, find their 
explanation in the larger good to which they lead, 
or of which they are the conditions. If the latter, 
if we live for the world, not the world for us, then 
we need not look far for our opportunities. They 
lie about us on every hand. No good deed, however 
obscure, no honest word, however unskilled, no 
battle with wrong, however unobserved, but has its 
beneficent consequences, and leaves the world bet- 
ter than it found it. If evil propagates itself by 
ways of which we do not dream, so does good as 
well. If nothing can measure the foul results of a 
single unclean act, so nothing can measure the 
gracious consequences of a single act of parity or 
of a single noble life. If our text tells us, in 
accordance with the old belief, that "by one man 
sin entered into the world, and death by sin," it 
adds at once, "As by one man's disobedience many 
were made sinners, so by the obedience of one 
shall many be made righteous." 

1892. 



XV. 
JUSTICE TO THE LABORER. 

" Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and 
needy." — Psalm lxxxii. 3. 

What is it that gives to this Harvest Sunday its 
beauty? It is not merely that autumn is here, 
with its golden and russet hues; it is not these 
harvest fruits alone, garnered to-day in our sanct- 
uary, and arrayed before us so enchantingly. It 
is the testimony which these things give, and 
others like them, to loving hearts and serving 
hands. It is the care and devotion to which they 
point, and the time and thought and willing spend- 
ing of one's self of which they speak. It is the 
evidence thus afforded year by year that our mod- 
ern rush for wealth and absorption in busy cares 
do not extinguish wholly the spirit of brotherhood, 
but that the poor and fatherless, the criminal and 
suffering, never had better or tenderer friends than 
in this money-loving age. 

One watches these matters with a certain appre- 
hensiveness nowadays; so conscious are we of the 
self-seeking and unheroic tendencies of the hour, 
so aware of the disposition, among old and young 
alike, to think of comfort rather than effort or self- 



I 88 DISCOURSES 

denial, so eager therefore to detect the slightest 
infusion into our lives of the old-time spirit of 
consecration. We can comfort ourselves, in a 
measure, it is true, by the large and lavish benevo- 
lence which characterizes the times, by the colos- 
sal giving that goes with colossal gains, the 
princely munificence that so often accompanies 
princely fortunes. But, after all, we want a little 
more assurance of the genuine passion for human- 
ity, the giving of one's self as well as one's pos- 
sessions, which is the real essence of charity. 

Each age has its mission and its methods. 
Ours, I think, so far as the domain of charity is 
concerned, is plain. It is the mission of organiza- 
tion. It is the duty of gathering up and formulat- 
ing the experiences of the past, and so giving clear 
direction to the vague and formless sentiment 
which has hitherto governed the race in its humane 
activities. "Other men have labored: we have 
entered into their labors." Others have conse- 
crated themselves in a thousand fields of loving 
beneficence: we have learned, through their suc- 
cesses and their failures, how best to attain the 
highest ends of charity. It is an age of systems 
and machinery, of practical capacity and executive 
skill: our duty is to utilize these for the largest as 
well as the smallest purposes, and make them serve 
the nobler ends of humanity no less than the baser 
ends of personal gain. And it is our part to do 
this in no half-hearted and apologetic way, but in 
a whole-hearted and aggressive way; not as though 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER 1 89 

it were only the best we can do, though infinitely 
below what other generations have done, but as 
though it were, if rightly apprehended, the best 
that any generation can do. There is a common 
feeling, not wholly to be wondered at, that, as 
systems advance, sentiment decays. Especially is 
it felt that the scientific temper of the age is bound 
to kill out the enthusiasm and spontaneity which 
in older times were the source of all great results. 
Yet this is by no means so sure. Indeed, there 
are indications of quite the opposite kind. Poetry 
did not die out when the poetic instinct, the most 
delicate of all, became fettered by the established 
laws of verse; else poetry would belong only to 
the infancy or childhood of the race. Art did not 
die out, though some modern critics would have us 
think so, with the entrance of scientific knowledge 
and technical perfection. On the contrary, in 
both these cases, it has proved that, the better the 
instrument with which genius was able to work, 
the more scope and freedom did genius enjoy and 
the more absolute the abandon with which it could 
lend itself to its inspirations. There are some 
who, from the completeness of outward form, infer 
at once the absence of true creative power, and will 
acknowledge no artistic excellence except when it 
is combined with crudeness and imperfection of 
method. Yet, if the history of man's progress in 
the arts proves anything, it proves, as it seems to 
me, that, when creative genius has the best scien- 
tific methods at its command, or the most highly 



I9O DISCOURSES 

developed language in which to express its thoughts, 
then it produces the finest fruits. And so I believe 
it is with the sentiment of humanity, which, like 
the poetic instinct, is one of the most delicate and 
sensitive of qualities. So far from being necessa- 
rily quenched by the perfection of its machinery, it 
may well get the more scope and freedom thereby, 
work with the more assurance, and throw itself 
with the more self-abandonment into its labors. 
Its enthusiasm will naturally grow with the con- 
sciousness that its every effort tells for all that it 
is worth. Nothing is more delightful than to visit 
the gatherings of any of our charitable organiza- 
tions at this season, and note the character of the 
workers, the fine order of intelligence which shows 
itself in their faces, combined with a fervor, an 
intensity, a freshness and spontaneity, which no 
earlier schools of beneficence could have surpassed. 
If excellence of method and perfection of machin- 
ery have deadened their enthusiasm, they certainly 
have not found it out themselves; nor would the 
observer be struck by it. The pity is that they 
are almost all of one sex and one or two profes- 
sions, though even in this respect there are strik- 
ing exceptions to the rule. The needs of suffering 
humanity, heard above all the tumult and noises of 
the time, are certainly calling an ever-increasing 
army of toilers into the field. We cannot but trust 
that the spirit of self-sacrifice will prove strong 
enough in the human heart to survive all the en- 
croachments of a purely commercial age. 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER 19! 

But the little we have of this spirit of consecra- 
tion only makes us cry out for more. This harvest 
season, with its lavish displays of nature's wealth, 
has a lesson for us all, and bids us ask ourselves 
whether we are doing our part in distributing about 
us the blessings we have received. Especially 
does it ask us whether, in our charitable efforts, 
we are governed by a regard for the highest inter- 
ests of those whom we wish to help. The age, as 
I have said, has its own methods and function, — to 
give to the spirit of charity a greater directness 
and efficacy than ever before, and make it serve the 
real needs of humanity. No one can look back 
into the past, and recall the mediaeval type of char- 
ity which prevailed for centuries, and feel that 
poverty or ignorance got its rights, or that men's 
real interests were studied, in the encouragement 
then given to pauperism and dependence. The 
poor were kept poor, and made to feel that their 
natural situation was that of being helped and fed. 
They learned to think of themselves as a special 
class whom society was bound to support. We 
have done much of late to counteract this feeling 
on the part of the working classes, and with a large 
measure of success. The question is whether there 
is not much still to be done in the same direction. 
With all our recognition of the evils of pauperism 
and of the importance of teaching the poor and de- 
pendent to help themselves, do we not still encour- 
age them at times to feel, if not that they are to 
be helped and fed, that they constitute a peculiar 



I92 DISCOURSES 

class in society which society is bound to propiti- 
ate and maintain? In our zeal for their welfare, 
are we always ready to remind them that with their 
larger rights go corresponding duties? As it is 
this aspect of the question which interests me most, 
and seems to me of most practical importance, I 
ask your serious attention to it this morning. The 
text which I have chosen shows the direction which 
I would give to our thoughts, "Do justice to the 
poor and needy." "Justice " may be a less entic- 
ing word than "mercy," "sympathy," or "ten- 
derness " ; yet I cannot but feel that, rightly 
understood, it carries them all within itself, and 
is at least the needed message of the hour. What 
I would urge is that the highest favor any one can 
ask of the world is simple and perfect justice. 

For one, I must confess that the abuses which 
have stirred me most profoundly of late have not 
been the sufferings and privations of the poor, but 
the false ideas of their rights aroused among them 
by the mistaken zeal of their friends, — not the 
indifference of society toward the outcast and 
oppressed, but the encouragement which society 
has given them to feel that in every struggle in 
which they are engaged they are always in the right 
and others always in the wrong. What has made 
my blood boil oftenest of late has been the insolent 
assumption on the part of the laborer, prompted by 
ill-advised friends, that all the social troubles 
which arise are the fault of the moneyed classes, 
intent always upon gain, and ready always to grind 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER I93 

the poor to the earth. I have noticed that any 
degree of violence on the laborer's part is condoned 
or apologized for; while, if the employer uses the 
slightest force in the defence of his property or his 
rights, the vials of the whole community's wrath 
are poured upon his head. I have noticed that, if 
the managers of important concerns or superintend- 
ents of large industries surrender to every demand 
of labor and pocket every affront, they are loudly 
applauded; while, if they stand firmly for their 
simple rights, they are savagely denounced. The 
only thing which is praised in dealing with social 
troubles is weakness and cowardice: the only thing 
which is blamed is spirit and courage. The mil- 
itia, the police, the law, are considered excellent 
institutions so long as they keep wholly in the 
background or wink at disturbances of the peace : 
they are an intolerable despotism the moment they 
are called in to enforce order and obedience. 
There are organized bodies of laborers at this very 
moment claiming for themselves the right to drive 
all other workmen from their occupation, and de- 
claiming against the State militia and the police as 
their natural foes, simply because public sentiment 
has abetted them in this belief, and made it impos- 
sible for them to discriminate between out and out 
tyranny on the part of government and the neces- 
sary maintenance of safety and peace. 

Now, with all possible allowance for the advan- 
tages which the well-to-do have over the poor, and 
which capital has over labor, and all possible 



194 DISCOURSES 

respect for organized labor and the good it has 
already accomplished and is still capable of accom- 
plishing, it is plain that this condition of things is 
intolerable. It is as great a wrong to one side as 
to the other. Say what we will of the need of mut- 
ual understanding and mutual forbearance, cowar- 
dice and subserviency can never be heroic traits. 
The state of society which makes the cultivation of 
these traits necessary and requires one class to 
fawn upon another is a bad state of society. It 
makes no difference whether the poor fawn upon 
the rich or the rich upon the poor: it is equally an 
evil. In the true order of society there will be no 
fawning anywhere; no terrified laborers toiling on 
starvation wages lest they lose their places, no 
frightened employers on their knees before their 
workmen lest they block the wheels of trade and 
make costly machinery useless. A community 
which breeds these ignoble traits in any of its 
ranks is hopelessly rotten, and does not deserve to 
prosper, even if prosperity were possible on such 
humiliating terms. The hope of every community, 
whether in ancient or in modern times, lies in the 
resoluteness and courage of its citizens. The State 
is no stronger than the members of whom it is 
composed. If they are weak and time-serving, and 
ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of peace 
and safety, or in order to escape pecuniary loss, the 
State is itself weak. If they are brave and strong 
and contemptuous of any loss, so their honor and 
self-respect are preserved, the State is vigorous and 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER I95 

able to insure blessings in the end to all its citi- 
zens. In the modern State no class has interests 
apart from the rest or in antagonism to them. The 
good of one class is the good of all, nor can any 
one really flourish at the expense of another. 

Now these are the principles (truisms though 
they seem to us) which we are bound in these days 
to enforce. If we have any duty to the laborer, it 
is this. In old time there might have been some 
reason for keeping the lower classes ignorant of 
the world, and conscious only of their dependence 
on those above them. To-day the part of true 
kindness is to make them understand the real situa- 
tion, to show them that, whatever philanthropy or 
an enlightened public sympathy may do for them, 
neither the laws of trade nor the laws of society 
can be set aside in their behalf, and that prosperity 
will come to them, not by being treated as a privi- 
leged class, with many favors to receive and no 
duties to perform, but by being placed on a simple 
equality with all others, sharing in the opportuni- 
ties which others enjoy, and amenable to the same 
discipline and subject to the same obligations with 
all their fellows. In this land there can be no 
privileged class, either of capitalists or of laborers. 
It is impossible for society to hold together in 
these modern times on any other basis than this, 
the equal rights and duties of all; and it is idle 
for any class to expect advancement on any other 
terms. In other words, to return to the thought of 
our text, the best which any class or any individual 
can ask is simple justice. 



I96 DISCOURSES 

Nothing is ever settled till it is settled right. 
For this reason, if for no other, it would be our 
duty to disabuse the laboring world of the extrava- 
gant and distorted ideas of their relations to society 
which they have thus far been encouraged to form. 
No temporary arrangement between capital and 
labor which is extorted from either side by terror- 
ism, or which rests upon anything but the funda- 
mental rights of both parties, can be of any real 
avail: the momentary triumph will be gained only 
at the cost of greater evils in the future. All the 
compromises or arbitrations whereby a present diffi- 
culty is palliated or escaped are only a postpone- 
ment to the future of what had much better be 
determined to-day. The future will rise up in 
judgment against all our provisional agreements 
and condemn them, unless they are in a line with 
eternal justice and right. Good temper and a con- 
ciliatory spirit are very excellent things; but they 
cannot change the laws of right or the laws of nat- 
ure or the laws of trade, and they make a great 
mistake when they pretend that they can. Not 
philanthropy itself is above these laws; and the 
best philanthropy is that which recognizes them, 
however stern they seem, and works out its ends 
through them, and not against them. Let us trust 
that the days have passed by when political science 
could be contemptuously dismissed as the "dismal 
science," and that the time has come when we can 
accept its conclusions intelligently, not as man- 
made conditions or a strait-jacket into which human 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER K)J 

beings are to be forced, but as simply the estab- 
lished methods, created by the same Power which 
formed our souls, whereby man's outward welfare 
can be best and most surely attained. It is true of 
these, as of all social laws, that it is the poor and 
unfortunate who suffer most when they are broken, 
and are most helped in the long run by their im- 
partial enforcement. The point at which the lover 
of his race should aim is to treat the suffering 
classes not as classes, but as men; to secure for 
them not peculiar privileges, but the common 
rights of humanity. Less than this can never sat- 
isfy them, and ought not to : more than this they 
cannot hope to receive. 

I am the more urgent upon this point because 
there is one flagrant wrong demanding our attention 
just now for which we have all made ourselves virt- 
ually responsible. I have long felt that, if I were 
to lead any crusade to-day, I should make myself 
the champion of unorganized labor. I have no 
quarrel with organized labor in itself, and do not 
question the good it can do or the important future 
it has before it; but I cannot forget that, while 
organized labor has the eye and ear of the commu- 
nity, and receives all the sympathy and help of our 
law-makers, there is a vaster body of laborers, more 
needy than these, and far more friendless, whom 
their privileged brethren treat only with disdain, 
and toward whom the world at large seems abso- 
lutely indifferent. As they have no political 
power and can pledge no votes, they are left to 



I98 DISCOURSES 

shift for themselves. I cannot forget that, with 
these millions of destitute workmen in our borders, 
whose only crime is that they are willing to work 
for the best wages they can receive, the interest 
and sympathy of the community are reserved for 
their organized and more aristocratic brothers. I 
cannot forget that, whenever the problem of labor 
is discussed, it is organized labor alone that comes 
into account, and that, whenever laws in behalf of 
labor are enacted, or privileges granted, it is 
organized labor only that reaps the benefit. The 
thousands who have power to compel it receive our 
attention: the millions who have no prestige, and 
can urge no claims but their needs, receive none. 
Nor can any one wonder at the effect of this strange 
favoritism upon its recipients, or the growing inso- 
lence and tyranny with which they employ the 
power which the community thus confers upon 
them. What American heart, unless dulled by 
long submission to such outrages, can help throb- 
bing with indignation when for four months an 
entire American community is held in terror, and 
hundreds of industrious workmen subjected to vio- 
lence and peril of their lives, solely because the 
privileged class of laborers do not choose to have 
any competitors in the field. Surely, it was not 
for this that the American republic came into exist- 
ence or American freedom was fought for and won. 
In our broad territories there is room enough for 
all; and the man who will not trust to his own 
merits, but seeks his advancement by robbing his 



JUSTICE TO THE LABORER I99 

brother of his chance, deserves no toleration what- 
ever. The shame of it is not so much that such a 
thing as I have just described can happen, as that 
it can happen and no protest be heard. The evil 
of this ignoble tyranny is that it works such degra- 
dation in the community which submits to it, and 
postpones so long the final triumph of humanity. 
For the day of humanity comes when there are no 
tyrants and no oppressed, but when equal justice is 
done to all. 

Here, at least, is the ideal which summons us all 
to-day. The easy path of charity is to give alms 
at your door, and get rid of suffering with a pleas- 
ant smile; the hard way is to follow the beggar to 
his home, make him scorn his beggary, and feel 
the stir of an awakening manhood. The easy way 
of meeting these social problems is to humor the 
discontented in all their real or fancied wrongs, 
and bid them look to society to right their griev- 
ances at a stroke; the hard but manly way is to 
show the tenderest sympathy for our brothers' 
needs, but to lead them at the same time to trust 
to the absolute laws of justice and right as more 
potent for good than any sympathy or tenderness 
that we can offer. 

1892. 



XVI. 
IMMORTALITY. 

A SERMON FOR EASTER. 

" He that findeth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth it for 
my sake shall find it." — Matt. x. 39. 

This special Sunday brings with it a question 
of its own: what influence Christianity has had 
upon the world's belief in immortality. No ques- 
tion could interest us more. We speak somewhat 
vaguely about the " Christian doctrine of the future 
life," and the important part which Christianity 
has had in establishing this belief; we cannot be 
better occupied this morning, I think, than in 
attempting to give our thoughts upon this theme a 
more definite form. In what sense, then, has Chris- 
tianity borne evidence to immortality? 

Turning first to the Scriptures themselves, to 
discover, if we can, just when and where this 
belief began, we come at once upon a singular fact. 
In the time of Jesus we find that the idea of the 
future and the resurrection was by no means a new 
one, but was already a point of controversy between 
different Jewish sects. "The Sadducees," we are 
told in the Book of Acts, "say that there is no 



IMMORTALITY 201 

resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the 
Pharisees confess both." Here, then, are two im- 
portant parties in the Jewish church, who, long 
before Christianity appeared, had been disputing 
upon the question of the resurrection, one of them 
believing it fully, the other disbelieving. Evi- 
dently, then, the doctrine of the resurrection can- 
not have been peculiar to Christianity. But, if the 
New Testament does not teach it as a new doctrine, 
still less does the Old, which is wholly silent upon 
the subject. Indeed, the Old Testament can hardly 
be said to be silent, as, wherever it alludes to the 
condition of the departed at all, it seems to repre- 
sent it as a condition of absolute unconsciousness 
and oblivion, from which there is no revival. "In 
death there is no remembrance of thee," says one 
of the Psalms : " in the grave who shall give thee 
thanks?" "There is no work nor device nor 
knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou 
goest," says Ecclesiastes. "There is hope of a 
tree, if it be cut down," says Job, "that it will 
sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof 
will not cease. . . . But man dieth, and wasteth 
away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is 
he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood 
decay eth and drieth up, so man lieth down and 
riseth not: till the heavens be no more [i.e., for- 
evermore], they shall not awake, nor be raised out 
of their sleep." "That which befalleth the sons 
of men," says Ecclesiastes, "befalleth the beasts; 
even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, 



202 DISCOURSES 

so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; 
so that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast. 
. . . All go unto one place; all are of the dust, 
and all turn to dust again." 

The idea of the future life is absent then from 
the Old Testament, yet has long been held, by one 
party at least, when the New Testament is written. 
How explain this perplexing fact? Ought we not 
to find it as a new doctrine in the one or the 
other, on the common assumption that this great 
truth comes to us as a definite revelation? We 
find our answer to this question by turning to the 
so-called apocryphal books, which appeared in the 
last two centuries before Christ, yet never were 
adopted among the canonical Scriptures. In them 
are such unequivocal and striking assertions of im- 
mortality as this, "For God created man to be im- 
mortal, and made him to be an image of his own 
eternity," which prove that some minds at least, 
during this interval between the Old Testament 
and the New, without any special revelation, had 
begun to hold serious and lofty hopes regarding 
the future life. When we ask ourselves further 
how it was that so important a belief could have 
sprung up independent of the Scriptures, we re- 
member at once that before these later books were 
written the Jews had been torn from their own 
soil and brought into intercourse for many years 
with other nations. During the Captivity, for 
instance, they had come under Persian rule; and 
the Persian religion at this time contained some 



IMMORTALITY 203 

very striking and to the Jews novel ideas as to 
the spiritual world and the angelic beings who 
inhabited it, coupled with conceptions of a future 
life, which the more thoughtful jews could hardly 
have helped remembering. After the Captivity, 
too, in Alexandria and elsewhere, Greek philoso- 
phy, with its profound speculations concerning 
the eternal life, became more or less familiar to 
Jewish scholars, and naturally enough wrought 
many changes in their ideas and their faith. 
In fact, the moment we give up the expectation 
of finding the idea of immortality as a distinct 
part of either Jewish or Christian revelation, 
and look for it simply in its natural place and 
time among human conceptions and in the history 
of human thought, the case becomes clear enough. 
It came of itself. It came when and where the 
human soul was ready for it. It came, in the first 
instance, through the effort of the human mind to 
penetrate the mysteries which surrounded it, and 
form some idea of what lies beyond. It came first 
to those races whose longing for higher knowledge 
was keenest, whose intellectual curiosity was great- 
est, whose speculative instincts and mystic ten- 
dencies were strongest, whose religious imagina- 
tion was boldest and freest. It came in earlier 
times, and in extraordinarily vivid form, to the 
Egyptians. It came in later days to the Persians. 
It came still later to the Greeks. It came, finally, 
through the influence perhaps of each of these 
latter nations, to the Jews, when their national 



204 DISCOURSES 

calamities led them to deeper meditations upon 
divine providence and their contact with foreign 
faiths forced them out of their first indifference, 
to take account of new and larger spiritual ideals. 
It came therefore to the early Christians as an 
inheritance from a religious ancestry far wider 
than simple Judaism. It came to them, not be- 
cause they were Jews, but because they were 
human; and the human soul claims all realms of 
enquiry, visible and invisible, as its own. 

Turning back now once more to the early hours 
of Christianity itself, we find, as we have seen, a 
wide-spread belief in the resurrection. This word, 
unknown to the Old Testament, is a familiar phrase 
throughout the Gospels. "In the resurrection," 
say the Sadducees, thinking to embarrass Jesus by 
their inquiry, "whose wife shall this woman be of 
the seven?" "I know," said Martha, "that my 
brother shall rise again in the resurrection at the 
last day." What does this word mean, we ask; for 
this use of it seems to imply a somewhat different 
sense from that in which we use it now. It 
had indeed a different signification, I answer. In 
those two centuries before the birth of Christianity, 
in the place of the Old Testament idea of the grave 
as the end of all had grown up a definite conception 
of an underworld, peopled by the spirits of the 
departed, who were awaiting there the last trump, 
which was to announce to them the Messiah's com- 
ing, and summon them all from their graves, to 
stand before the great Judge, and enter, if worthy, 



IMMORTALITY 205 

into the joys of the kingdom of God, which was to 
be established upon earth. "Many of them that 
sleep in the dust of the earth," says Daniel (whose 
prophecy belongs to the same period with the 
apocryphal books), "shall awake, some to everlast- 
ing life and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt." This Jewish doctrine of the future to 
which I refer was somewhat vague, for it was still 
in process of formation when Christianity ap- 
peared. Some seem to have believed that the final 
judgment was to come immediately upon the gen- 
eral resurrection and the appearance of the Mes- 
siah, others that the Messiah would first reign for 
a thousand years, and then a second resurrection 
would follow, when Gentiles as well as Jews 
would be brought before the judgment-seat of 
God. In any case, however, we are to bear in 
mind that the Messiah's reign was to be an 
earthly one, and resurrection meant not the en- 
trance upon a spiritual immortality, but the rising 
from the grave to enter upon a glorified earthly 
existence. All the allusions in the New Testa- 
ment to the resurrection (whether in the Book of 
Acts or in the Epistles) show that this is the 
only sense in which the word was then understood. 
"Those of us who are alive, and remain unto the 
coming of the Lord," says Paul, "shall not pre- 
vent [have precedence over] them which are dead. 
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven 
with a shout, and the voice of the archangel and 
the trump of God, . . . and the dead in Christ shall 



206 DISCOURSES 

rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall 
be caught up together with them in the clouds, 
to meet the Lord in the air." It was this idea of 
a bodily resurrection and an earthly reign of the 
Lord which gave importance to the question an- 
swered by Paul in so much detail in the Epistle to 
the Corinthians, an unmeaning question if the 
future life is a spiritual one: "How are the dead 
raised up, and in what body do they come ? " Was 
it to be the same body in which they had formerly 
lived upon earth or some new and etherealized form? 
It is in this light, too, that the resurrection of 
Jesus had its special significance. It was not 
regarded then as in any sense a proof of immortal- 
ity or of the resurrection; for the resurrection was 
not denied, and no such proof was needed. Elijah 
had restored the dead to life, according to their 
Scriptures; so had Elisha. "Women received 
their dead raised to life again," says the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, as though this were no strange oc- 
currence to the Jew, familiar with his nation's 
history. Why, then, the great importance attached 
to the resurrection of Christ? Paul gives us the 
answer. "Now is Christ risen from the dead," 
says Paul, "and become the first-fruits of them that 
slept." In other words, the rising of Christ was 
the first step toward the establishment of the heav- 
enly kingdom, which was to be followed immedi- 
ately by the rising of others who believed in him. 
"Every man in his own order: Christ the first- 
fruits; afterwards those that are Christ's at his 



IMMORTALITY 207 

coming." After this Christ will reign "till he 
hath put all enemies under his feet; then he 
will deliver up the kingdom to God." 

It is quite clear, then, that the term "resurrec- 
tion," in its New Testament sense, cannot be under- 
stood unless we take with it all the accompanying 
ideas and beliefs of the time; the visible coming of 
an earthly Messiah within the generation then liv- 
ing, the literal rising from the graves of those who 
had died, to enter, in their spiritual bodies, together 
with those still living, into the purified and regen- 
erated life upon earth. But it is equally clear that 
this is by no means the sense in which we use the 
word to-day. In this sense, it would have no mean- 
ing for us at all. In this sense, indeed, it has but a 
remote bearing upon the question of immortality. 
Resurrection meant not the ascending of the free 
spirit into heaven, to dwell in the presence of God, 
but simply the rising of the body from the grave. 
It meant, according to Paul, the entrance upon an 
incorruptible and immortal existence; but it was 
an existence within the limits of space. It is a 
beautiful picture which Paul sketches for us here, 
this exalted and purified humanity, dwelling upon 
a sinless earth, or in the air just above the earth; 
but it is not our conception of the life eternal. It 
was a conception of the hour, possible only as part of 
a very primitive ideal of the universe. Resurrec- 
tion at its best is one thing, immortality is another. 
The mere escape of the body from the grave or of 
the soul from the embrace of death is one thing, 



208 DISCOURSES 

immortality is another. Entrance upon a future 
state of being, which may prove transient or may 
prove permanent, is one thing, immortality is an- 
other. The passing from a physical to a spiritual 
existence is one thing, immortality is another. 
The future, with all its mysteries revealed and its 
highest hopes more than gratified, is one thing, 
immortality is another; for the future may end as 
well as the present, and to-morrow prove as fleet- 
ing as to-day. 

It being clear, then, that the terms "resurrection" 
and "immortality" are by no means synonymous, 
we ask next in what sense the New Testament does 
teach the truth of immortality. So far as direct 
texts are concerned, it is very hard, as you know, 
to find them. It is not a theme which the Gospels 
or Epistles are at any pains to put forward. It is 
not discussed or emphasized. Probably the ab- 
stract question, whether the soul exists independent 
of the body or is in itself imperishable, had not 
yet arisen among the Jews. We could read 
through the entire Gospels without knowing that 
there was such a question. The word "immortal- 
ity" hardly occurs. If the evidence of Christianity 
for immortality is to be sought in texts, in direct 
assertions, in proofs or arguments, you will not 
find it. You must seek it elsewhere than in texts. 
The speculations and questionings and doubts 
which are so familiar now, and enter so largely 
into all the sacred literature of to-day, were then 
unknown. The Jews and early Christians were 



IMMORTALITY 2C>9 

concerned to know whether the end of the world 
was approaching. They were concerned to know 
whether they should behold the Messiah's coming, 
whether they should themselves share in its glories, 
whether their departed friends were to enter also 
into it with them, and in what bodies they would 
come. They were not concerned to know whether 
the soul is in and of itself immortal. 

What, then, is the testimony of the New Testa- 
ment to immortality? If I were to answer this 
question in my own language, I should say it testi- 
fies not so much to immortality as to life. It 
testifies not to the lesser thing, but to the greater. 
Grant the reality of life, suppose a great intensity, 
a fulness, a depth of spiritual life, and you have 
something over which the grave can have no power. 
Christianity does just this. It emphasizes the 
spiritual quality, the moral essence, of this earthly 
life. It declares that life consists in something 
more than the abundance of the things which one 
possesses. It shows the worth of virtue, the invin- 
cible character of justice, the glory of self-sacrifice. 
In saying, "He that taketh not his cross and fol- 
loweth after me is not worthy of me," in saying, 
"He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that 
loseth his life for my sake shall find it," it says 
far more than if it asserted never so positively a 
second life beyond the grave. It declares that 
without which a life beyond the grave would be no 
life at all. It declares that which, if truly believed 
in, would lift the soul far above the power of death 
to touch. 



210 DISCOURSES 

This, as it seems to me, is the real testimony of 
the Scriptures to immortality. Christianity has 
triumphed over death, not by its doctrine of the 
resurrection, but by the vigor which it has lent to 
man's moral and spiritual nature. It answers ev- 
ery question which we put to it to-day, not by any 
more direct reply than others have given, but by 
saying, "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he 
that loseth it shall find it." The effect of Chris- 
tianity upon the world's faith in immortality is a 
purely moral effect. So far as speculation is con- 
cerned, Christianity has raised more questions than 
it has answered; so far as real and living faith is 
concerned, it has strengthened man's hold upon 
purity, goodness, truth, and so fortified his belief in 
the eternal verities. If we were to judge simply by 
the present state of the controversy over the future, 
we might doubt how much Christianity has accom- 
plished; for never was the discussion of this great 
theme so general or were sides taken upon it so 
violently as now. If we were, on the other hand, 
to judge by the faith which man shows in right- 
eousness and truth, we can see what Christianity, 
joined of course with the other forces of modern 
civilization, has done. Christianity has lifted no 
veil, has betrayed no secret, has solved no mystery, 
has silenced no queryings; but it has shown to the 
world the beauty of a consecrated life. It has 
shown once for all the dignity and sublimity of 
self-sacrifice. 

Is this little to say? Is it not rather the most 



IMMORTALITY 211 

and best that can be said? It calls us back, as it 
seems to me, from all our questionings and specu- 
lations to the one point of practical importance to 
us. It reminds us that immortality is a thing not 
of place or time, but of spiritual quality. What is 
there in your life or mine, it asks, which death 
cannot touch? What is there here so pure that 
death, though it approaches, must needs pass it by; 
so ethereal or delicate that death will grasp at it 
in vain? Nay, what is there here which, even 
though the grave fails to ensnare it, will still have 
power in itself to pass beyond? Death misses the 
chrysalis, and the butterfly escapes; but the but- 
terfly spreads its fragile wings in the unaccustomed 
atmosphere only to flutter out its feeble moment 
of existence, and then, with the first zephyr that 
smites it, to die a second death. Are these spirits 
of ours to survive the grave simply to flutter and 
disappear? What is there in them capable of 
meeting heaven's breath? What is there to en- 
dure? What is there worthy to endure? What is 
there strong enough to meet the new conditions of 
another and higher existence? 

These are the real questions which this hour 
brings. If we ask them in all seriousness, we 
shall not have meditated upon this subject in vain. 
Remember that, however precious the boon of im- 
mortality, the great Giver forces his gifts on none. 
Are we alive to the value of this sublime preroga- 
tive? Are we ready to assume it if offered us? 
With the high calling goes the high responsibility. 



212 



DISCOURSES 



Are we willing to put forth the effort, the steadfast- 
ness, the loyalty to all holiness and purity, which 
befits those who, as they tread the dusty paths of 
life, are carrying within them immortal souls? 

Plainly, this offer of immortality is no honeyed 
entreaty to us to come forward, even against our 
will, to accept eternal joys, no soft assurance that 
all our neglects and timidities and distrusts will 
by and by be offset by the inpouring of heavenly 
courage and might. It is a trumpet-call, ringing 
through all the hiding-places of our effeminacy or 
sloth, to tell us what God expects of those whom 
he has called to be immortal spirits. 



; Foiled by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn, 
We leave the brutal world to take its way, 
And 'Patience — in another life,' we say, 
1 The world shall be thrust down, and we upborne.' 
And will not then the immortal armies scorn 
The world's poor routed leavings ? or will they 
Who failed under the heat of this life's day 
Support the fervors of the heavenly morn ? 
No, No : the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun: 
And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, 
From strength to strength advancing, only he, 
His soul well knit, and all his battles won, 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." 



1893. 



XVII. 

THE PLACE OF JESUS IN THE 

WORLD'S RELIGIOUS 

HISTORY. 

A COMMUNION SERMON. 

"That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." — Luke 
»■ 35- 

The table spread before you this morning recalls 
a holy life to which, in common with the rest of 
the Christian world, though after quite a different 
fashion from most of them, we love to pay honor. 
And what honor shall we pay? To every great 
soul through whose aid the world has learned to 
live a holier life we wish to offer the homage which 
is its due; exactly what homage is due to Jesus, 
and what place is his in the world's religious his- 
tory? If at first it seems strange, after so many 
centuries have passed, to be still asking this ques- 
tion, at second thought I think it will appear that 
we are better prepared to answer it to-day than at 
any time before. Certainly, no generation since 
Christian history began has devoted more time or 
serious study to this theme than ours; nor do the 
results of these scholarly researches seem to me 



214 DISCOURSES 

altogether so vague or unsatisfactory as is com- 
monly assumed. Let us at least try to make our 
own thought upon it as clear and intelligible as 
we can. 

We turn naturally, first of all, to the Scripture 
records themselves. Nothing has thrown more 
light upon those records or given to their picture 
of Jesus greater distinctness than the simple 
arrangement of them in chronological order; the 
discovery that the New Testament books belong 
not to one period, but to several periods, and dis- 
close therefore not the views of a single hour or 
a single mind, but the ideas of successive epochs. 
The effect of this discovery upon the Old Testa- 
ment books, illumining as it has almost every 
page of Jewish history, is well known; it will be 
worth our while to-day to apply it to the New 
Testament narratives, and see what results it pro- 
duces there. 

Modern investigation points more and more 
clearly to one among the four Gospels as in all 
probability (if not with certainty) the oldest; the 
Gospel of Mark. Here, then, if anywhere, al- 
though this, like all the Gospels, was put into its 
present form at a much later day, we get the primi- 
tive portraiture of the life of Jesus. And how 
simple and clear that brief story! It begins at 
once, as you remember, with the ministry of John 
the Baptist, as though at that time the miraculous 
birth and the various poetic traditions of the nativ- 
ity had as yet no existence; it ends as abruptly 



JESUS IN THE WORLDS RELIGIOUS HISTORY 21 5 

(the last twelve verses of the Gospel are a later ad- 
dition) with the brief statement that the women, on 
visiting the grave of their master, found it empty, 
and were told that he had risen; as though all the 
traditions which gathered around the resurrection 
were also of a later growth. Between these two in- 
cidents lie plainly marked the prominent features of 
that one year's service in Galilee. Forgetting for 
the moment all that was afterwards written, we see 
in the Gospel of Mark an earnest follower of John 
the Baptist, aroused by the appeals of that impas- 
sioned anchorite and impelled upon the Baptist's 
imprisonment to take up himself his unfinished 
work, and proclaim to his countrymen the speedy 
coming of the kingdom of God. What the one had 
taught by the banks of the Jordan, the other, with 
ever-growing sense of the significance and grandeur 
of his mission, carries from village to village of 
his native Galilee. Midway in this career comes 
a grave and critical hour. Turning aside from his 
accustomed round and entering the mountain re- 
gions to the north of Galilee, he held an earnest 
conversation with his followers, of which one start- 
ling echo reaches us in the question put suddenly 
to the disciples, "Whom do men say that I am?" 
Various are the answers given. "John the Bap- 
tist," (who had just died) said one. "Elias," said 
another. "One of the prophets," said a third. 
"But whom say ye that I am? And Peter an- 
swered, Thou art the Christ" 

Memorable words, with an unmistakable meaning. 



2l6 DISCOURSES 

Till then, it would seem, he had not claimed to be 
the Christ, nor had others ventured to think of him 
as such ; else the conversation would have no mean- 
ing at all. Till then he had simply preached the 
thrilling tidings of mighty events close at hand, 
wherein the expectation of ages were to be at last 
fulfilled, and God's kingdom to be finally estab- 
lished upon earth. 

And here let us pause for a moment. Impos- 
sible to our modern thought that Jewish concep- 
tion of the kingdom of God as an earthly empire. 
But equally impossible, we must remember, for any 
soul reared in Jewish traditions not to share its 
splendid and inspiring hopes. It is the form in 
which all the more exalted spiritual ideals of the 
hour must needs shape themselves. As well expect 
one living in those days to put his thoughts into 
English or German speech as to cast them in the 
moulds of our modern beliefs. That would not be 
what the earnest soul would strive to do. Not to 
turn away from the ideals of his age would be his 
impulse, but to be fired by them, to feel what was 
best and sublimest in them, to be filled by their 
grand and generous hopes. Till that moment Jesus 
had simply preached of the coming kingdom to his 
Galilean countrymen. But the time had come when 
this was no longer enough. If such mighty events 
were pending, was he to be a spectator only, a mere 
foreteller of their coming? Some one must be a 
leader in them; must urge his prophetic warnings 
not upon humble Galilean peasants only, but upon 



JESUS IN THE WORLD S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 21J 

priest and Pharisee and ruler as well; must brave 
all the perils of the conflict, insure, if possible, its 
victory, and meet, if necessary, the ignominies of 
its defeat. Some one must stand at the front : then 
why not he? Why might not those mystic, half- 
understood prophecies of a Messiah who was to 
usher in the heavenly kingdom find their fulfilment 
in him? If that was indeed his call, he must heed 
it. There was no choice. All the heroism of his 
nature bade him listen to that voice. If his disci- 
ples, too, believed that this call was his, what 
room for hesitancy? There was none. He did 
not hesitate. From that hour his course was clear. 
He turned at once from Galilee to Jerusalem. No 
more village parables by the pleasant wayside. 
Jerusalem itself, its rulers, its high priests, its 
councils, must hear his message. And they heard 
it; but, alas! they did not listen. Rather they 
turned in fury against him. The history of that 
last tragic week at Jerusalem is the record of an 
ever-growing sense in Jesus' heart of the hopeless- 
ness of his effort. He looks for some divine attes- 
tation of his faith, but looks in vain. Each day 
deepens the gravity of the situation, multiplies his 
perils, and brings the issue nearer, yet throws no 
gleam of light upon his path. The prayer at Geth- 
semane was the agonized wrestling of a soul bit- 
terly aware that hope had almost vanished, yet 
loftily submissive to an inscrutable will. Only at 
the last moment did his hope finally give way; and 
the disappointment of those awful hours found ut- 



2l8 DISCOURSES 

terance in the heart-broken cry, "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " 

It is sad indeed that in such hours the suffering 
heart cannot look forward into the future, and see 
the splendid triumph that is to spring out of appar- 
ent defeat. It is easy for us, knowing all that was 
to follow, to understand how much more glorious 
was that death upon the cross than any immediate 
success could have been, and how much grander 
than the literal fulfilment of that hour's hopes is 
the spiritual fulfilment which after ages have 
beheld. But at the time the future was hidden, 
and the moment's grief alone was felt. The dis- 
ciples, as we know, were absolutely unnerved by 
it, and fled in sheer despair. Had not his personal 
influence over them been so much stronger than 
they were aware, and their faith in the man proved 
so much greater than their disappointment in his 
mission, the name of Jesus might from that mo- 
ment have been forgotten, and his ministry have 
proved actually the failure which then it seemed. 
Fortunately, such souls cannot perish from the 
earth; and the impress which Jesus had made upon 
his generation was too profound to be erased. 

Such, in general outline, is the picture which 
the world would have received of Jesus of Nazareth, 
had nothing remained from those days but the 
Gospel of Mark.* But other writings survive in 
which, as we might expect, a different portraiture 

* Matthew and Luke, while introducing great variations, do not essentially alter 
this picture. 



JESUS IN THE WORLD S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 219 

appears. In Paul's Epistles, though earlier in date 
than the Gospels, we catch the impressions made 
upon one who knew nothing of the earthly life of 
Jesus, but accepted him as the Messiah, and applied 
to him at once the prevailing notions for which the 
Messiah stood. The reader of Paul's letters asks 
himself continually how it happens that an immedi- 
ate contemporary of Jesus, able to gather a hundred 
anecdotes of his life and a hundred reminiscences 
of his preaching, has preserved for us no single fact 
connected with his ministry. The answer is that 
to Paul those earthly incidents were of the slightest 
possible account. He thought of Jesus only as ful- 
filling a heavenly destiny, which was predetermined 
in celestial counsels, and in which his human 
career was hardly more than a passing incident. 
To the Jews of Paul's school the conception of the 
Messiah had taken a speculative and mystic form. 
They thought of him as a pre-existent being, a 
second Adam, present with God from all time, who 
was to appear on earth and accomplish his mission, 
and then return again to heaven. The important 
events of Jesus' career to Paul's mind were his death 
and resurrection. "Sown a natural body, he had 
been raised a spiritual body." So the old Scripture 
had been fulfilled. "The first Adam was made a 
living soul; the last Adam was made a quicken- 
ing spirit." In the light of this metaphysical con- 
ception, it is easy to see that the human life and 
purely human activities of Jesus, as set forth in the 
earlier Gospels, would speedily disappear, and the 



220 DISCOURSES 

actual Jesus be replaced by a visionary being whose 
functions were heavenly rather than earthly, and in 
whom very little flesh and blood would long remain. 
The Galilean preacher, son of Joseph and Mary and 
companion of Peter and James and John, became 
the "man from heaven," the second Adam. The 
first step had been taken in an idealizing process, 
which was to be continued through many ages. 

The next step in that process is to be found in 
a still later New Testament book, the so-called 
Gospel of John. Before this book appeared, the 
greater part of a century had probably intervened; 
and among the many who brought the philosophical 
speculations of the hour to bear upon the traditions 
of Jesus' life was the writer of this Gospel. The 
mystic preface to the work is a chapter out of the 
religious meditations of the second century, taking 
the life of Jesus as its theme, and using those earthly 
incidents only as the groundwork of its philosophy. 
The "man from heaven" of Paul's Epistles has be- 
come the eternal Word, the Logos, a celestial being 
dwelling in the beginning with God, and acting as 
the divine agent in creation. "All things were 
made by him, and without him was nothing made 
that was made." The Logos shares in the divine 
nature. "And the Word was with God, and the 
Word was a god"; i.e.> was a divine being, an 
angelic creature. 

Already, as you see, the idealizing process has 
gone very far. Only one step further is needed, 
and Jesus will become not merely a divine being, 



JESUS IN THE WORLD'S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 221 

but God himself. And this further step, as we 
know full well, the Christian church in the fourth 
and fifth centuries was quite ready to take. To 
have seen the transforming process which has gone 
on within the New Testament pages is to under- 
stand completely how Jesus of Nazareth became 
in the end the Second Person of the Trinity. 

Plainly, then, if Jesus is entitled still to the 
world's homage, it must be the real Jesus, not the 
Jesus of first or second or fourth century specula- 
tion. It is the Jesus of the primitive Gospel, 
fortunately preserved for us by Mark, whom we 
must honor. It is the Galilean preacher, the 
friend of publicans and sinners, the teacher of a 
lofty and stern morality, whose heroic career seems 
all the more grand and beautiful when contrasted 
with the metaphysical creations which have usurped 
its place. The test of one's admiration of Jesus of 
Nazareth should be the capacity of appreciating the 
simple story told in the Gospel of Mark. Does 
that story appeal to you? Does it touch your 
heart? Does it arouse your conscience? Does it 
claim for itself, as you read, your instant love and 
respect? Then you have paid him the honor which 
is his due. The best homage you can offer to any 
soul is to understand it; to take it at its actual 
worth. The great soul asks to be esteemed not 
for its titles or its offices, but only for itself. To 
feel the severe and simple beauty of that gospel 
story means tenfold more than to be dazzled by the 
splendors with which a sacred theology or ritual or 



222 DISCOURSES 

art has overlaid it. We are better followers of 
Jesus, the nearer we get to the man himself. 

Nor yet do I mean by the term followers of Jesus 
that our duty is to accept him as a literal authority 
to-day, or try to make him live again the life of 
the present hour. The first century and the nine- 
teenth are too far apart for that. In a certain 
sense, the more distinctly we reproduce his actual 
life, the more foreign from our own it seems. Of 
what service is it, save as a piece of historic real- 
ism, to bring back from its oblivion this old Jewish 
conception of the Messiah's kingdom? It was the 
dream of that far-off age, and did its service then. 
The mission of Jesus was not to bring into the 
world a religion ready made, which was to keep its 
form despite the changes and progress of all time. 
It was rather to give to the world a spiritual im- 
pulse which it henceforth could not lose, but which 
should shape itself anew with every age. The 
value of his words lies not in themselves so much 
as in the higher and larger thoughts to which they 
are constantly leading. The moral convictions, 
the spiritual ideals, which Jesus threw into the 
world, entered at once upon a life and development 
of their own. They were no longer his in the 
sense of bearing always the exact shape and profile 
of his thought. They were his only in their con- 
stant power of provoking other souls to fresh con- 
victions and opening out in other minds into new 
and grander beliefs. The hidden tie which makes 
the Christian ages one, the continuity of faith 



JESUS IN THE WORLDS RELIGIOUS HISTORY 223 

which entitles any believers to-day, Catholic or 
Protestant, traditionalists or free thinkers, to call 
themselves Christian, lies in the right which any 
great truth or body of truths has to claim as its 
own all the new ideas and beliefs, however unlike 
itself, into which in the course of ages it has grown. 
Different enough always the first estate of such a 
truth and its last. The pompous ceremonial of 
the Greek or Roman Church bears no closer re- 
semblance to the primitive worship in the upper 
chamber in Jerusalem than do the Christian confes- 
sions of to-day, orthodox or heretical, to the faith 
of Peter or James or Paul. Ask one of those orig- 
inal disciples to worship at a modern Christian 
altar, and he would not know what to do or say. 
Ask him to repeat the articles of any modern creed, 
and he could not follow a single one of its phrases, 
nor grasp a single one of its ideas. For each gen- 
eration its own generation or century is enough; 
it cannot look or think or dream beyond. Enough 
that it think its own thoughts, do its own duty, 
fight its own battles, win its own faith. If that 
faith be torpid or shallow, it will die with those 
who hold it; if it be living and deep, it will 
touch other generations with the contagion of its 
convictions, and move them to mighty beliefs and 
convictions of their own. 

Hopeless enough, then, the task of making Jesus 
and his times live again in our lives, just as they 
were when Christianity began. But possible enough 
for any true heart to appreciate spiritual purity and 



224 DISCOURSES 

moral heroism even amid the strangest surround- 
ings, and to honor the great faith which, believing 
that it could remove mountains, made the faith of 
after generations strong. To read the gospel story 
in its primitive simplicity is to comprehend how 
human tenderness and unselfishness and love have 
in them the power to transform the world. 

Wherein, then, lies the secret of Jesus' power or 
his title to our homage? For myself, I find it best 
expressed in the words which I have taken as my 
text, — words which always seem to me fuller than 
almost any New Testament passage beside at once 
of poetry and of prophecy. " That the thoughts of 
many hearts may be revealed." The power of Jesus 
has appeared not in forcing upon others his own 
thoughts, but in awakening theirs. He has some- 
how roused the world to noble dreams and filled 
the soul with grand ideals. Those very idealizing 
processes of which I have spoken, which wrapped 
the Galilean ministry so soon in mists of unreality, 
to what do they themselves point but to an earthly 
career, which had in it great power to stir the imag- 
ination, and, like the lofty mountain top, to create 
the clouds which were to conceal it? From begin- 
ning to end, Christianity has wrapped itself in 
mists; has lost itself in splendid dreams; has 
breathed out its heart in music and poetry; and 
architecture and painting; has filled the soul with 
rapturous and presumptuous hopes, and given it 
an audacious faith in the future of humanity; has 
filled the mind, too (Christianity, I mean, not the 



JESUS IN THE WORLD S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 225 

Christian Church), with restless yearnings, and sent 
it forth in endless pursuit of truth. It has been 
the awakener of moral aims, of intellectual aspira- 
tions, of spiritual ideas. 

It is so still. In it "the thoughts of many- 
hearts are still revealed." If Christianity survives 
at all, and so long as it survives, it will be by 
virtue of this power to stir the race to ever-new 
aspirations, and help each soul to its best and no- 
blest thought. 

1893. 



XVIII. 
FAREWELL DISCOURSE. 

" We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of 
God in company." — Psalm lv. 14. 

Life has no choicer boon to offer than its com- 
panionships; and, among them all, shall we not 
say that none are holier or finer than its religious 
companionships? This thinking together on high- 
est themes, taking counsel together on gravest 
duties, laboring together for the moral and social 
advancement of the race, — what closer tie than this 
can unite friend with friend? I should be sorry to 
be understood, while severing such a tie, as under- 
rating its value or significance. Though no longer 
desiring for myself even the slight compulsions 
which it involves, I cannot forget the strength 
and joy it has brought to me in the past nor ques- 
tion its abiding worth as a factor in our modern 
life. Rather Jet me testify, while abandoning it, 
to its great possibilities, when once the transitions 
of the present religious situation have been passed, ; 
and the preacher's office is recognized for what it 
really is and prized for what is best and deepest 
in it. 

And, in bearing this testimony, let me touch at 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 227 

once upon what is to me the supreme token of its 
value, — its confidential character. The pastor and 
people "take sweet counsel together" on all high- 
est concerns. Elsewhere in our earthly lives are 
certain necessary or traditional reserves. Friend 
is not obliged to speak with friend of his deeper 
thoughts, and does not often care to unbosom him- 
self of his religious troubles, or to disturb the 
tenor of pleasant companionship by too serious a 
vein. Parents not infrequently let their children 
grow into maturity without once betraying the 
secret of their spiritual life, timidly refraining 
from themes which they do not wholly fathom, or 
anxious lest they prejudice opinions which every 
soul should be left to form unhampered. Here we 
should meet for just those confidences which the 
world avoids. If the people have any claim upon 
their spiritual guide, it is to know his inmost soul 
on sacred themes ; not what the past has delivered to 
him, nor what the present expects him to say, but 
what he thinks and feels. The perfunctory word 
is a dead word, though all the ages have repeated 
it; the personal word alone has life. The pulpit 
should be the throne of sincerity and frankness. 
If the man has nothing of his own to say, this is no 
place for him; if he has, let it be spoken as the 
sole message he is consecrated to deliver. If he 
has one belief for his study, another for his pulpit, 
he is betraying the most sacred trust that man ever 
reposes in man. His thought may not be pro- 
foundly wise, nor contain the whole of divine 



228 DISCOURSES 

truth; but it is his, and is therefore as much of 
divine truth as he can competently speak. Nor do 
I mean that it must be his as an original birth in 
his own soul, or that he is to set his crude notions 
against the wisdom and learning of the ages. I 
assume as the first condition of his taking so sacred 
an office that he has acquainted himself thoroughly 
with what the past has to teach; that he has 
searched its scriptures and listened to its confes- 
sions and traced out its problems and its beliefs; 
and that both mind and soul have been enriched by 
whatever spiritual wealth the world's holier souls 
have bequeathed. No study is too profound, no 
training too far-reaching or severe, to fit one to 
address his fellows on religious themes. In these 
days of earnest thought, the man who is willing to 
enter the ministerial profession with half an educa- 
tion, or to bring into the pulpit callow speculations 
or hasty conclusions, only reveals his colossal mis- 
conception of the work he has undertaken. Each 
generation is heir to all the past, and must take up 
its religious culture where the past has laid it 
down. But this being understood, and the relig- 
ious teacher having secured the best equipment 
which the age can offer, then his message is of 
worth only as it is a direct message from the heart. 
Then he is to impart in confidence to those to 
whom his confidence is due whatever comes home 
to him as a spiritual reality. This is not only 
his duty, it is his strength. It is not only his 
people's right, it is their sole opportunity of 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 229 

vital nourishment. The priesthood having been 
once for all stripped of its supernatural prestige, 
and left to stand henceforth purely upon its own 
merits, and to receive honor solely for what it 
shows itself capable of doing for the world, what 
can take the place of the old authority but this, — the 
accent of sincerity, the tone of personality? Truth 
is to win its victories henceforth through its own 
intrinsic power, as delivered from the lips of those 
who have inwardly felt its mighty persuasions. 
The world is to learn to detect the truth through 
the quiver of its voice, as it comes from hearts bap- 
tized in the fire of glowing conviction. No man 
can say effectively or persuasively what he does 
not positively believe. If you wish to be moved 
or uplifted when you gather here, or if you yearn 
for genuine spiritual help, ask only to have the 
preacher's self, — to be taken into his spiritual con- 
fidence. Do not ask to have your own ideas re- 
flected back to you, do not ask that the preacher 
shall echo the regulation phrases, even upon the 
highest of themes. Ask rather that he, in and of 
himself, through whatever path, shall get at the 
heart of things. Do not ask never to be antago- 
nized by what is spoken here. Ask rather for those 
first-hand deliverances of faith which, whether you 
accept them or not, inevitably open fresh vistas, 
and make clearer for you, and perhaps larger, your 
own visions of the truth. Not because this is the 
place for controversy, which it is not, nor because 
truth is best stated aggressively, but because no 



23O DISCOURSES 

real or living thought can get to you save through 
the speaker's actual beliefs. There is no passion 
of the soul but in the utterance of its own emo- 
tions; no true eloquence but the eloquence of in- 
tellectual and moral conviction. 

It is an old thought, but let me urge it here once 
more where it especially belongs, — that no truth 
comes into the world at all save in the mould of 
personal belief. The world's great religious 
leaders have been such solely by virtue of their 
capacity of seeing profoundly and feeling intensely 
life's great verities. Their hold upon the world 
has come through the contagion of their individual 
faith. What was Christianity in its first inception 
but the way in which Jesus and the two or three 
who came nearest to him felt about eternal things ? 
Had there not been just then and there a certain 
soul or certain souls that believed surpassingly, 
nothing would have happened to disturb the placid 
tenor of the world's history. If there be not some- 
thing of the same sort in the preacher to-day, in 
however less degree, nothing will happen now. 
Truth advances by having its every distinct and 
successive phase in turn explicitly set forth. The 
more explicit and definite, the surer the progress. 
And in this progress no aspect of the truth, how- 
ever humble, so it be real, is without its force. 
The preacher is here to clothe for the hour these 
eternal verities in the garb, or rather to impress 
upon them the form, of his own individuality. To- 
morrow to be forgotten, for the moment it must be 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 23 I 

reckoned with. In it perhaps the eternal word 
will catch some passing accent which it has not 
caught before. Through it, if you accept his confi- 
dence, though no great wisdom comes to you, his 
word may touch you by the tone and pathos of its 
reality. 

Especially is this true of a preacher of our own 
faith, as indeed it is of him alone that I have any 
right to speak. Let others construe religious duty 
or fidelity as they may, for us, as it seems to me, 
there is but one path, — the path of unfaltering 
sincerity. There is a certain danger, it must be 
remembered, in the very friendliness and unity 
which are beginning to characterize the religious 
world in our generation. Beautiful the brotherly 
spirit which is abroad, in so far as it means simply 
the breaking down of unchristian barriers and a 
united search for the truth ; but not beautiful at all 
if it leads to the destruction of religious individu- 
ality, or to those soft concessions in which the clear 
lines of thought or belief are lost. Truth lies, we 
may be sure, in no middle ground between existing 
creeds, but somewhere above and beyond them all. 
The method of religious progress is for each party 
in the Church to define its position unequivocally 
and hold to it uncompromisingly. The spirit of 
Christian charity demands neither of us nor of 
others that we should surrender the slightest sylla- 
ble of the faith that is dear to us, but only that we 
should learn to credit each other's beliefs with the 
truth that is in them, and each to take the other at 



232 DISCOURSES 

his noblest and best. For this end we must be 
able to see each other and bear with each other as 
we truly are. We are truest to our Christian fel- 
lowship when we announce our thought in its clear- 
est tones. To temper or cover our beliefs or walk 
with dainty and apologetic steps as we approach 
our brethren of other creeds is to offer to Christian 
charity no test at all by which it shall be known. 
To unite opposing churches by abandoning all 
prominent or characteristic tenets and meeting upon 
certain undisputed axioms, which, for convenience' 
sake, we entitle the "essentials of belief," is 
simply to postpone indefinitely the true unity, 
where diametrically conflicting faiths, if such there 
are, shall recognize each other as brothers in the 
truth. If we cannot bear the friction of antago- 
nistic ideas, earnestly and reverently held, the hour 
of Christian fellowship has still long to wait. 
Brotherhood means friction, whether in the family 
or in the Church, — the friction of friendly conflict, 
the friction of bosom companions learning to honor 
each other's individualities, to adjust themselves to 
each other's peculiarities, and to recognize each 
other's rights. The one question is whether the 
Christian Church is large enough to hold us all, 
and hold us all not as stunted or deformed, but in 
our full stature. If it is not, the sooner we sep- 
arate, the better; if it is, then the sooner we 
assume our full stature and accustom each other to 
our very form and face, the better. On every 
ground it is time to give up this child's play of 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 233 

posturing and mincing in each other's presence 
that we may seem to be what we are not, and to 
begin in manly fashion to take and be taken at our 
very worth. Never have I felt more strongly than 
to-day that, if we are to be a strong body in the 
future, or to maintain the best traditions of the 
past, it cannot be by the path of pietism or of mys- 
ticism; it cannot be by seeking to befog the deep 
issues of the hour, or by reserving our highest 
praises for those who substitute fine-sounding 
phrases for honest convictions; it can only be by 
following frankly and fearlessly our special lines 
of thought. We must commend ourselves to the 
world by the value of the word we preach and our 
unflinching fidelity to the behests of modern in- 
quiry. We must win the world's confidence by 
the fulness of our resources, by our moral earnest- 
ness, by our faith in eternal truth. 

I should be sorry if, in advocating frankness and 
fearlessness, as I have done here, I should seem to 
be pleading for a defiant or aggressive attitude on 
the preacher's part; I am thinking rather of the 
silent claim which his own inmost beliefs have 
upon him. He is not called upon to attack others, 
but only to be true to himself. However it may 
have been in the past, the mission of the liberal 
preacher to-day is no longer to overthrow or assail. 
Indeed, if he seeks the full confidence or sympathy 
of his flock, he will regard their beliefs as tenderly 
as his own. Nor is any one called upon in these 
days to run a campaign for advanced thought or 



234 DISCOURSES 

boast his courage in maintaining his opinions. He 
is simply to follow quietly his own spiritual 
promptings, regardless of the prejudices or censures 
of the world, which once were so formidable, but 
which have now lost all their terror. Even the 
names by which the world likes always to stigma- 
tize the methods which are foreign to it, he is not 
obliged to heed. If others like to term him agnos- 
tic, rationalistic, materialist, or apply any other 
name to him, that is their concern, not his. To a 
certain class of minds these names are everything. 
They know nothing of the religious thought of 
the hour till they have mapped out its territories 
in definite lines and assigned a title to each. But 
to the earnest student or the follower after relig- 
ious truth these names are of slight account. The 
moment a belief or system is labelled, its outcome 
is in a certain sense predetermined. It is com- 
mitted in advance to certain conclusions, and in 
so far loses its elasticity or freedom. Convenient 
for argumentative purposes or for historians of 
thought, who must needs marshal their subjects in 
recognized schools, for the individual thinker these 
party labels are superfluous and harmful. What- 
ever is true in any system, he will appropriate to 
himself without apology or disclaimer, availing 
himself of its help and then pushing on to his own 
conclusions, without wasting time to define his 
position or enroll himself in any existing ranks. 
He will have his own preferences, of course, and 
in a modest way his own definite philosophy; he 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 235 

will avow his sympathy, if occasion calls for it, 
with one or the other of the great tendencies of 
thought which have divided the world's thinkers 
through all time; but he will accept no creeds and 
commit himself to no conclusions. It is the truth 
alone that he is after. Names have no terror for 
him, nor yet any charm. Let him be true to this 
single purpose, and neither he nor those who listen 
to him will long be scared by any of the theological 
spectres by which the world loves to terrify the 
unthinking and the unwary. May the time soon 
come when our congregations shall no longer 
describe what they hear as safe or unsafe, orthodox 
or heretical, moderate or radical; but only as ra- 
tional or irrational, scholarly or unscholarly, clear 
or crude, serious or trivial. Everything is safe 
which has a larger truth in view and is thought- 
fully and devoutly following it. I cannot believe 
that the preacher who, without perhaps winning a 
single follower to his own religious ideas, has 
freed those who hear him from all needless alarms 
and accustomed them to the clear air of honest 
thinking, is wholly without his reward. 

Here will, of course, arise the question whether 
I am not making the preacher's function too purely 
an intellectual one; whether his main office is not, 
after all, rather to comfort and cheer than simply 
to teach; and whether religion must not by its 
very nature, to-day as well as in the past, appeal 
supremely to sentiment and feeling rather than to 
thought. Let me frankly recognize whatever truth 



236 DISCOURSES 

there is in this statement. But to urge one idea is 
not necessarily to disparage another. The preacher 
to the sentiment has a great and boundless field, 
and will always come nearest, no doubt, to his 
hearers' hearts. Possibly his office is noblest and 
highest of all. Yet to each one his own province. 
I have been quite as aware as any of you, in the 
years just past, that tender words of comfort and 
consolation would often have brought far greater 
satisfaction than the more strenuous gospel to 
which you have been called upon to listen. But 
each one must be true to himself, and give that 
aspect of religion which to him is supreme. With- 
out belittling the emotional side of piety. I would 
only urge that the other, too, has its place and its 
rights. If man's religious nature is not pure intel- 
lect, no more is it pure sentiment. Mind and heart 
are separated by no such rough and arbitrary boun- 
daries as these. Xot only are there great problems 
waiting to be intellectually solved, on which many 
earnest souls stake their spiritual fate, but the pro- 
founder thought carries not infrequently a deeper 
sentiment with it, and touches deeper places in the 
heart. I confess my faith in that order of spiritual 
emotion which is coupled with high intelligence, 
and cannot be dissevered from it. I confess my 
faith in the spiritual yearnings which will be satis- 
fied with naught but the unadorned and naked truth. 
I still feel that of all the illusions of the hour that 
which makes of religion a process of soothing and 
fondling, and would lull the suffering heart or the 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 237 

young soul by soft and dreamy rites, is the falsest 
and most perilous. I still feel that of all spiritual 
atmospheres the most invigorating and health- 
giving is the atmosphere of reality. There is not 
yet room, I suppose, nor is the time fully ripe, for 
the preacher who cares simply to tell the truth 
about spiritual themes; who in times of sorrow will 
not go a step beyond his knowledge of the future to 
conjure up enchanting visions of what lies beyond 
the veil; who in hours of mental struggle will not 
claim a more intimate acquaintance with the divine 
counsels or the divine nature than he really has; 
who in moments of faltering faith will not stretch 
a single point or borrow a single mystic phrase to 
save a hundred believers for his sect. Yet, after 
all, for frankly facing the truth and looking into 
it with honest eyes the time has always come. 
Not what we want to imagine God to be, but what 
he verily is; not what we can possibly dream of 
immortality, but what it actually promises; not 
what we long to think of the present or the future, 
of earth or of heaven, but what they really are, is 
what the soul needs, — needs it in grief as in joy, 
in convulsions of spiritual agony as in the calmness 
of complacent trust. Grand verities are these, — 
God, heaven, immortality. Man has not yet meas- 
ured or fathomed their greatness, we may be sure. 
We yearn to know their inmost secrets. But the 
centuries are long, and the generations to come 
will hasten more quickly to their goal if we bravely 
and without reserve tell the truth that is in us; if 



238 DISCOURSES 

we avow our blindness as well as our sight; if we 
walk slowly and thoughtfully, that others who come 
after us may make the better speed. If man cannot 
bear the light of simple truth or breathe its unpol- 
luted air, even in the soul's extremest hours, then 
our fate is hard and our God is cruel indeed. For 
myself, let me say that I know of no position in 
which the preacher can stand, no hour of his career, 
nor duty to which he can be called, where truth is 
not his strongest ally and sincerity his surest 
weapon. 

I should neglect one of the most important of the 
preacher's functions if I said nothing of his rela- 
tions to society or to the social and political ques- 
tions of the hour. If I am not wholly mistaken, 
his duties here are in these days peculiarly binding 
and imperative. He no longer stands as the offi- 
cial monitor in all public concerns; no more does 
he stand — as our fathers stood in the days of 
slavery — in peril of his place if he speaks an 
impolitic word. To-day the risk is small, but the 
duty great. The peculiarity of which I speak is 
this: Great moral questions are before us; but they 
have no tribunal. We can no longer deceive our- 
selves. Our popular institutions, whatever their 
virtues, — which few of us question, — are breed- 
ing a moral cowardice, a constant and inevita- 
ble mingling of policy with personal conviction, 
which robs some of the most important social or 
political problems of an honest hearing. Those 
who should naturally discuss and determine them 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE -239 

can, for the most part, bring no calm or unterrified 
judgment to bear upon them, if indeed they dare to 
discuss them at all. The significant and appalling 
feature of the situation is that there are certain 
great questions of public interest upon which one 
must not speak. This Western continent is sup- 
posed to breathe the air of liberty, its press to be 
free, its public servants to be laboring for the 
rights of humanity ; yet at this very moment there 
are two or three questions of the highest general 
concern upon which every one in official position, 
as he values his place, must be dumb. It is no 
exaggeration to say that the fear of popular dis- 
pleasure, or the necessity of winning and securing 
the popular vote, browbeats Legislature, Congress, 
and press, and lulls the entire community, even in 
the face of grossest abuses, into timid silence. 

For all these themes there is one tribunal at 
least still open, before which each cause can be 
pleaded without silence and without fear of conse- 
quences, — a tribunal which has no care for votes, 
which owes no allegiance to party, which is not 
obliged to regard the opinions of laborer or soldier, 
or to heed the decrees of politician or of priest. 
If these topics were otherwise or at other times 
unbefitting this place, they now become, by sheer 
force of necessity, its proper themes. Whoever 
finds himself standing where the voice of justice or 
true humanity can be best or loudest heard is bound 
by that very fact to speak. Circumstances give to 
the preacher, for the moment, a vantage-ground 



24O DISCOURSES 

which he may not neglect. The pulpit cannot 
claim to be in reality a court of last appeal, nor 
can the preacher claim for himself any peculiar 
opportunities of information or securities against 
error. Yet such thought as he has he must utter. 
He may be wrong in his conclusions, but he 
can at least break the deadening spell of silence; 
he can force stifled questions into the arena of 
open discussion; he can forbid the plotters of 
evil to hide their schemings from the day; he 
can deny to intriguing partisans the privilege of 
frightening their followers into torpor; if politi- 
cians are timorous, he can compel them at least 
to confess their cowardice; if parties are governed 
by policy alone, he can forbid them the luxury of 
playing the role of patriotism. 

Each generation protests against being faced by 
its special sin, and will not hear it denounced 
in any but the most general terms. We are always 
sure that the iniquities of former ages were far 
beyond any of our own more enlightened time. 
When my ministry began, the foul system of slav- 
ery was still polluting the moral atmosphere of the 
land and degrading both public and private life to 
an extent, as is popularly supposed, which has 
never been known before or since. Let me declare 
as distinctly as words will allow that I can recall 
nothing in that black period of slavery more de- 
moralizing, more profoundly humiliating, more 
oppressive, more disheartening to the lover of his 
country or the believer in popular institutions, 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 24I 

than the tyranny with which public opinion to-day 
enslaves the masses of the community, or the ter- 
rorism by which the coarsest and basest classes of 
our populace hold our States and cities in their 
clutch. No hour of the past has seen a more piti- 
ful or ignominious spectacle than this. In such 
hours he holds a place of power who can simply 
summon these dark disgraces out of their hiding- 
places into the light of day. 

The ministry, especially the liberal ministry, is 
the natural promoter of all humane activities and 
the natural ally of the suffering and down-trodden 
everywhere. May it ever remain so ! May it ever 
show forth its faith by its works of beneficence and 
love! Yet I confess that it is another aspect of 
the question which interests me most to-day. I 
hold the churches quite as much bound to guard 
the community against weak and unwholesome sen- 
timentalism as to foster a healthy sentiment of 
brotherly love. If poverty and ignorance claim 
our sympathy and have their rights, so do intelli- 
gence and industry and enterprise ; and, if the lat- 
ter are in the greater danger, our strength and 
courage must be enlisted in their behalf. While 
we stretch out our hands to the laborer in every 
genuine effort which he makes to rise from his 
degradation or poverty, let us be equally ready to 
resist and condemn him the moment he seeks to 
make all other interests in the land subordinate to 
his own, or to use his political advantages to tyran- 
nize over the institutions which have emancipated 
him. 



242 DISCOURSES 

In all these secular concerns, as in his theology, 
the liberal preacher is privileged to take the atti- 
tude of independence and individuality. He is 
not bound, because he is liberal, to advocate every 
movement which assumes that name; he is bound 
only to be true to his own ideas. If good people, 
misled by humane sympathies or deceived by 
names, are wasting moral energy on false or delu- 
sive issues, it is his duty to lift a warning voice, 
though he seem to be siding with the most conser- 
vative forces of society. There is no necessary 
alliance between liberalism or radicalism and inno- 
vation. Many old things are good, better far than 
any new devices of modern times. Justice is good. 
Orderliness is good. Intelligent obedience to law 
and right is good. To hold by the best things in 
the past is good. In many a latter-day cause 
which enlists the men and women of his faith, he 
may see the veriest caricature of progress, the most 
flagrant denial of the foundation principles on 
which society must rest, the most palpable efface- 
ment of all the finer and more delicate distinctions 
which beautify our social life. Here as before he 
cares little for names. Radical or conservative, 
progressive or reactionary, is all the same to him, 
so long as he deems himself fighting for humanity 
and right. 

Such seems to me the liberal "preacher's place, 
however poorly any individual preacher may suc- 
ceed in filling it. For the future of the liberal 
cause I can feel no anxiety, however little our own 



FAREWELL DISCOURSE 243 

denomination may have to do in determining it. 
The forces of modern progress all fight on our side. 
In the growing love of humanity, which is bound 
in the end to compel all churches to forget their 
creeds in the practical service of man; above all, 
in the spread of the scientific spirit with its single 
eye for the truth, — a spirit to which I have always 
given my absolute allegiance, — I see signs of 
promise which nothing can conceal or annul. Side 
by side with the ever-recurring triumphs of eccle- 
siasticism, and mightier than the power of any 
church or the allurements of any mediaeval rites, is 
this resistless progress of critical inquiry, emanci- 
pating the mind of Christendom in spite of itself, 
and constraining the world to bring all its historic 
faiths, with all its traditions and beliefs, to the 
test of exact research. Here is a power which 
nothing can stay. In better ways than we could 
ourselves devise, and with a swifter progress than 
any of which our fathers ever dreamed, it is work- 
ing out the ends to which our church is pledged, 
and the sole ends for which, as a denomination, we 
can care. 

And as I leave you with little anxiety for the 
cause we have at heart, so I can leave you, I am 
sure, with every hope for your own bright future as 
a church. In a moment like this much that my 
feelings urge me to say I may not even attempt to 
speak, but must leave you to read for yourselves 
within these guarded lines. These eleven years of 
undisturbed and delightful intercourse cannot have 



244 DISCOURSES 

been wholly vain either for your life or for mine; 
and surely these closing hours have brought me 
many sacred assurances which I may be pardoned 
for holding henceforth among my choicest mem- 
ories. I can only ask for my successor the same 
confidence and sympathy which you have always so 
freely granted to me. If I were to give you any 
single message of farewell, it would be the wish 
that this ancient church may be constantly ani- 
mated by the spirit of which I have spoken here as 
characterizing our modern age, — the fearless and 
reverent love of truth, — and may find in it an ever- 
increasing strength and joy. 

1893. 



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